The Soft Compiler: A Web-Based Tool for the Design of Modular Pneumatic Circuits for Soft Robots

TL;DR

The paper introduces the Soft Compiler, a web-based tool that simplifies and optimizes the design of modular pneumatic circuits for soft robots, reducing complexity and preventing wiring errors.

Contribution

It presents a novel web-based graphical interface that generates optimized soft circuit diagrams from user-defined behaviors, improving design efficiency and accuracy.

Findings

Successfully designed and verified three soft circuits of increasing complexity

Reduced circuit size from 11 to 4 logic gates while maintaining functionality

Open-source tool available under MIT License

Abstract

Developing soft circuits from individual soft logic gates poses a unique challenge: with increasing numbers of logic gates, the design and implementation of circuits leads to inefficiencies due to mathematically unoptimized circuits and wiring mistakes during assembly. It is therefore practically important to introduce design tools that support the development of soft circuits. We developed a web-based graphical user interface, the Soft Compiler, that accepts a user-defined robot behavior as a truth table to generate a mathematically optimized circuit diagram that guides the assembly of a soft fluidic circuit. We describe the design and experimental verification of three soft circuits of increasing complexity, using the Soft Compiler as a design tool and a novel pneumatic glove as an input interface. In one example, we reduce the size of a soft circuit from the original 11 logic gates to 4 logic gates while maintaining circuit functionality. The Soft Compiler is a web-based design tool for fluidic, soft circuits and published under open-source MIT License.