IPAB WORKSHOP - 13/10/2022

Talk Title: Data-Driven Modelling and Control of Soft Robots 

Abstract: Soft and continuum robots have opened new possibilities for addressing real-world tasks. They can follow smooth curvilinear trajectories, offer great dexterity, and can manipulate objects in constrained environments. They have been proposed for variety of applications including healthcare, agriculture, and search and rescue. However, they exhibit nonlinear behavior due to their soft structure, distributed friction between the robot components, and unconventional actuation methods. Therefore, accurate modelling of the robots’ motion is difficult. In this talk, I present several novel data-efficient methods for modelling and control of these robots without any prior knowledge of the robot kinematics/dynamics, namely Koopman method and Neural ODE. I demonstrate the performance of these methods in several applications including optical biopsy via flexible robots and object manipulation in constrained environments.