Scaling Up Soft Robotics
A Meter-Scale, Modular, and Reconfigurable Soft Robotic System
Shuguang Li (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University)
Samer A. Awale (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Katharine E. Bacher (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Thomas J. Buchner (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technische Universität München)
Cosimo Della Lieu (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), TU Delft - Learning & Autonomous Control)
Robert J. Wood (Harvard University)
Daniela Rus (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
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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.