Robust navigation of a soft growing robot by exploiting contact with the environment
Abstract
Navigation and motion control of a robot to a destination are tasks that have historically been performed with the assumption that contact with the environment is harmful. This makes sense for rigid-bodied robots, where obstacle collisions are fundamentally dangerous. However, because many soft robots have bodies that are low-inertia and compliant, obstacle contact is inherently safe. As a result, constraining paths of the robot to not interact with the environment is not necessary and may be limiting. In this article, we mathematically formalize interactions of a soft growing robot with a planar environment in an empirical kinematic model. Using this interaction model, we develop a method to plan paths for the robot to a destination. Rather than avoiding contact with the environment, the planner exploits obstacle contact when beneficial for navigation. We find that a planner that takes into account and capitalizes on environmental contact produces paths that are more robust to uncertainty than a planner that avoids all obstacle contact.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Mar 20, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1177/0278364920903774
Entities
People
- Allison M. Okamura
- Elliot W Hawkes
- Joseph D Greer
- Laura H Blumenschein
- Ron Alterovitz
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- National Science Foundation
- Stanford University
- University of California, Santa Barbara
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill