FilMBot: A High-Speed Soft Parallel Robotic Micromanipulator
Jiangkun Yu, Houari Bettahar, Hakan Kandemir, and Quan Zhou

TL;DR
FilMBot is a fast, precise, and cost-effective soft robotic micromanipulator that combines low-stiffness film structures with electromagnetic actuation, enabling high-speed operations and broadening potential applications.
Contribution
The paper introduces FilMBot, a novel soft robotic micromanipulator with high speed, precision, and simple construction, advancing the capabilities of soft robotic manipulators.
Findings
Achieves angular speeds up to 2117 and 2456 deg/s
Linear velocities of 1.61 m/s and 1.92 m/s with a 4-cm needle
Maintains high precision (~6.3 μm) across frequencies
Abstract
Soft robotic manipulators are generally slow despite their great adaptability, resilience, and compliance. This limitation also extends to current soft robotic micromanipulators. Here, we introduce FilMBot, a 3-DOF film-based, electromagnetically actuated, soft kinematic robotic micromanipulator achieving speeds up to 2117 {\deg}/s and 2456 {\deg}/s in {\alpha} and \{beta} angular motions, with corresponding linear velocities of 1.61 m/s and 1.92 m/s using a 4-cm needle end-effector, 0.54 m/s along the Z axis, and 1.57 m/s during Z-axis morph switching. The robot can reach ~1.50 m/s in path-following tasks, with an operational bandwidth below ~30 Hz, and remains responsive at 50 Hz. It demonstrates high precision (~6.3 {\mu}m, or ~0.05% of its workspace) in path-following tasks, with precision remaining largely stable across frequencies. The novel combination of the low-stiffness soft…
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