Force-Safe Environment Maps and Real-Time Detection for Soft Robot Manipulators

TL;DR

This paper presents a real-time framework for soft robot manipulators that maps force safety criteria from task space to configuration space, enabling safe interaction with delicate obstacles.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to ensure force safety by mapping force limits into configuration space for soft robots, validated through simulation and hardware experiments.

Findings

Accurately detects force safety during interactions with deformable obstacles

Enables real-time safe configuration planning for soft manipulators

Validated on a two-segment pneumatic soft robot

Abstract

Soft robot manipulators have the potential for deployment in delicate environments to perform complex manipulation tasks. However, existing obstacle detection and avoidance methods do not consider limits on the forces that manipulators may exert upon contact with delicate obstacles. This work introduces a framework that maps force safety criteria from task space (i.e. positions along the robot's body) to configuration space (i.e. the robot's joint angles) and enables real-time force safety detection. We incorporate limits on allowable environmental contact forces for given task-space obstacles, and map them into configuration space (C-space) through the manipulator's forward kinematics. This formulation ensures that configurations classified as safe are provably below the maximum force thresholds, thereby allowing us to determine force-safe configurations of the soft robot manipulator in real-time. We validate our approach in simulation and hardware experiments on a two-segment pneumatic soft robot manipulator. Results demonstrate that the proposed method accurately detects force safety during interactions with deformable obstacles, thereby laying the foundation for real-time safe planning of soft manipulators in delicate, cluttered environments.