The SoftRobots plugin

Our contribution consists in a new framework to simulate and control soft robots. This framework is based on a mechanical modeling of the robot elements combined with fast real-time direct/inverse FEM solvers. The keypoint of our approach is that the same modeling is used for interactive simulation of its behavior and interactive control of the fabricated robots.

Simulate Anisotropic Soft Robots

Inverse Kinematics with Contact Handling

Inverse Kinematics of Manipulation Tasks

Soft-rigid Hybrid Robots

Planning of soft-rigid hybrid arms in contact with compliant environment

Our Vision

Future robots don’t need to be «rigid» but made of complex deformable structures, composed of stiff and soft regions, close to organic materials that we can find in the nature. Soft robotics opens very attractive perspectives in terms of new applications, reduction of manufacturing costs, robustness, efficiency and security. It could constitute a great jump in robotics in the following years.

The Challenge

The biggest obstacle to make this possible is that the current methods to design and control don’t work for deformable ones and new approaches have to be invented. To overcome this obstacle we work on a novel approach that integrates a real-time model of both the robot deformations and its interaction into the control loop of the soft robots. This is where the challenge begins…