Our paper titled “Real-time Dynamic Models for Soft Bending Actuators” has been accepted for presentation in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics,  2019.

Abstract—Soft robotics have witnessed increased attention from the robotic community due to their desirable features in compliant manipulation in non-structured spaces and human friendly applications. Their light-weight design and low-stiffness are ideally suited as environmental interfaces to interact with fragile and sensitive objects without causing danger. Deformation sensing of soft robots so far has relied on highly nonlinear bending sensors and vision based methods that are not suitable for obtaining precise and reliable state feedback. In this work, for the first time, we explore the use of a state-of-the-art high fidelity deformation sensor that is based on optical frequency domain reflectometry in soft bending actuators. These sensors are capable of providing spatial coordinate feedback along the length of the sensor at every 0.8 mm at up to 250 Hz. This work systematically analyzes the sensor feedback for soft bending actuator deformation and then introduces a reduced order kinematic model, together with cubic spline interpolation, which could be used to reconstruct the continuous deformation of the soft bending actuator. The kinematic model is then extended to derive an efficient dynamic model that runs 10 times faster than real-time and is validated against the experimental data.