Human Interface for Teleoperated Object Manipulation with a Soft Growing Robot

TL;DR

This paper introduces a human-centered interface that enables intuitive teleoperation of a soft growing robot for manipulation tasks, achieving high success rates and precise placement in a user study.

Contribution

It presents a novel body-movement-based control interface for soft growing robots, enhancing ease of use and performance in manipulation tasks.

Findings

97% task success rate

Placement errors below 2 cm on average

Effective control via body movements

Abstract

Soft growing robots are proposed for use in applications such as complex manipulation tasks or navigation in disaster scenarios. Safe interaction and ease of production promote the usage of this technology, but soft robots can be challenging to teleoperate due to their unique degrees of freedom. In this paper, we propose a human-centered interface that allows users to teleoperate a soft growing robot for manipulation tasks using arm movements. A study was conducted to assess the intuitiveness of the interface and the performance of our soft robot, involving a pick-and-place manipulation task. The results show that users completed the task with a success rate of 97%, achieving placement errors below 2 cm on average. These results demonstrate that our body-movement-based interface is an effective method for control of a soft growing robot manipulator.