Academic literature on the topic 'Soft bio-mimetic robots'

Robots are becoming more interactive and assisting to human beings day by day. They are serving humanity in the fields of industry, defense and medicine. Exoskeletons are also devices that reside in category of wearable robotics. An exoskeleton is an external structural mechanism with joints and links corresponding to those of the human body. With applications in rehabilitation medicine and virtual reality simulation, exoskeletons offer benefits for both disabled and healthy populations. Exoskeletons can be used as a capability magnifier or assisting device. This paper presents a proposed design for smart active exoskeleton for lower limbs. This proposed exoskeleton design not only assist a person but also tries to improve its GAIT. The twin wearable legs are powered by Actuators, all controlled by a microprocessor. The simulation results of the control mechanism shows its smart capabilities. In addition, the processor based control produces a more natural muscle like activity and as such can be considered a soft and bio-mimetic actuation system. This capacity to “replicate” the function of natural muscle and inherent safety is extremely important when working in close proximity to humans. The integration of the components sections and testing of the performance will also be considered to show how the structure and actuators can be combined to produce the various systems needed for a highly flexible/low weight clinically viable rehabilitation exoskeleton.

AbstractAdvances of soft robotics enabled better mimicking of biological creatures and closer realization of animals’ motion in the robotics field. The biological creature’s movement has morphology and flexibility that is problematic deportation to a bio-inspired robot. This paper aims to study the ability to mimic turtle motion using a soft pneumatic actuator (SPA) as a turtle flipper limb. SPA’s behavior is simulated using finite element analysis to design turtle flipper at 22 different geometrical configurations, and the simulations are conducted on a large pressure range (0.11–0.4 Mpa). The simulation results are validated using vision feedback with respect to varying the air pillow orientation angle. Consequently, four SPAs with different inclination angles are selected to build a bio-mimetic turtle, which is tested at two different driving configurations. The nonlinear dynamics of soft actuators, which is challenging to model the motion using traditional modeling techniques affect the turtle’s motion. Conclusively, according to kinematics behavior, the turtle motion path is modeled using the Echo State Network (ESN) method, one of the reservoir computing techniques. The ESN models the turtle path with respect to the actuators’ rotation motion angle with maximum root-mean-square error of $$1.04 \times 10^{-11}$$ 1.04 × 10 - 11 . The turtle is designed to enhance the robot interaction with living creatures by mimicking their limbs’ flexibility and the way of their motion.

This thesis contains the work done by Paolo Gidoni during the doctorate programme in Matematical Analysis at SISSA, under the supervision of A. Fonda and A. DeSimone. The thesis is composed of two parts: "Avoiding cones conditions and higher dimensional twist" and "Directional friction in bio-inspired locomotion".