ModSoftBot: Design, Modeling, and Control of a Modular Pneumatic Serial Soft Robot

Soft robots inspired by nature have demonstrated several advantages over conventional rigid robots. The design and fabrication of these soft robots are essential to achieve the desired requirements. This paper presents a new modular design of a soft pneumatic arm capable of generating multiple degrees of freedom (DoF) through a specific arrangement of coupled torsional/extensional actuators. Each actuator is lightweight, low-cost, and simple to fabricate. These actuators can be arranged as soft joints, to obtain the desired robot kinematics for the envisioned applications. To validate the proposed approach, the actuator is fabricated and characterized showing 76° of rotational motion and less than 6 mm elongation. In addition, we studied a case of a pick-and-place manipulator capable of generating 4 DoF. An experimental prototype was developed and fabricated using 3D additive manufacturing techniques. The prototype was then characterized and controlled via teleoperation to successfully perform a pick-and-place operation.