Automated co-design of soft hand morphology and control strategy for grasping

To leverage soft hands to their full potential for grasping, we propose to design their morphology and control signals together. Considering both parameter domains makes it easier and faster to find solutions compared to fixing parameters of either domain. Additionally, the approach scales well to high-dimensional parameter spaces, which is a precondition to make automated co-design useful for soft hands. We further present an efficient simulator for simulating grasps with soft hands which is based on the SOFA framework and enables us to simulate more than a million grasps per day. These two complementary improvements promise a boost in the development of competent soft hands and their control in the future.