Data-driven Model Reduction for Soft Robots via Lagrangian Operator Inference

TL;DR

This paper introduces a data-driven approach for reducing the complexity of soft robot models by leveraging their Lagrangian structure, resulting in more accurate and robust reduced-order models for real-time control.

Contribution

It proposes a novel Lagrangian Operator Inference method for structure-preserving model reduction, improving predictive accuracy over existing techniques.

Findings

Lagrangian structure preservation enhances model accuracy

Reduced models outperform traditional methods in robustness

Method applied successfully to a complex soft robot example

Abstract

Data-driven model reduction methods provide a nonintrusive way of constructing computationally efficient surrogates of high-fidelity models for real-time control of soft robots. This work leverages the Lagrangian nature of the model equations to derive structure-preserving linear reduced-order models via Lagrangian Operator Inference and compares their performance with prominent linear model reduction techniques through an anguilliform swimming soft robot model example with 231,336 degrees of freedom. The case studies demonstrate that preserving the underlying Lagrangian structure leads to learned models with higher predictive accuracy and robustness to unseen inputs.