An Integrated Framework for Modular Reconfigurable Soft Robots

Abstract

Soft robots have tremendous motion capability, and their modular methodology helps in setting up reconfigurable and flexible prototypes. In this paper, a user-friendly integrated framework for a modular reconfigurable soft robot system is proposed, which contains a generic electrical design pattern, and a software framework encapsulating a scalable middle tier and user-friendly GUI. This highly compact integrated framework can be deployed in different types of modular soft robot systems and controls every single module in such systems through an easy-to-use API. We applied this framework to three kinds of soft robot systems, namely, dual module, multi-legged, and pneumatic soft robots. The experiment results show the motion control validity, complete robot setup and control, and application scalability of the proposed framework.