Scaling Up Soft Robotics: A Meter-Scale, Modular, and Reconfigurable Soft Robotic System
Name
soro.2020.0123.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.47 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
a9dbdcc4f75a98f76f4cc1a4308bdfa0
Author(s)
Li, Shuguang
Awale, Samer A
Bacher, Katharine E
Buchner, Thomas J
Della Santina, Cosimo
Wood, Robert J
Rus, Daniela
Date Issued
2022
Journal
Soft Robotics
Publisher
Mary Ann Liebert Inc
Citation
Li, Shuguang, Awale, Samer A, Bacher, Katharine E, Buchner, Thomas J, Della Santina, Cosimo et al. 2022. "Scaling Up Soft Robotics: A Meter-Scale, Modular, and Reconfigurable Soft Robotic System." Soft Robotics, 9 (2).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Today's use of large-scale industrial robots is enabling extraordinary achievement on the assembly line, but these robots remain isolated from the humans on the factory floor because they are very powerful, and thus dangerous to be around. In contrast, the soft robotics research community has proposed soft robots that are safe for human environments. The current state of the art enables the creation of small-scale soft robotic devices. In this article we address the gap between small-scale soft robots and the need for human-sized safe robots by introducing a new soft robotic module and multiple human-scale robot configurations based on this module. We tackle large-scale soft robots by presenting a modular and reconfigurable soft robotic platform that can be used to build fully functional and untethered meter-scale soft robots. These findings indicate that a new wave of human-scale soft robots can be an alternative to classic rigid-bodied robots in tasks and environments where humans and machines can work side by side with capabilities that include, but are not limited to, autonomous legged locomotion and grasping.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1089/SORO.2020.0123
