Modeling and Control of a Pneumatic Morphing Soft Quadrotor based on the SOFA Framework for Dynamic Soft Robotic Simulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a SOFA framework-based finite element model for simulating and controlling a soft quadrotor with pneumatic morphing arms, maintaining physical interpretability while capturing complex behaviors.

Contribution

It presents a novel SOFA-based modeling and control approach for pneumatic soft arms in a quadrotor, enabling accurate dynamic simulation and morphing control.

Findings

The model accurately captures the dynamic behavior of pneumatic soft arms.

The proposed controller effectively achieves desired morphing and positioning.

Simulation results validate the modeling framework and control strategy.

Abstract

This article presents a novel SOFA based finite element method for the soft body modeling and the corresponding dynamic simulation and control of a pneumatic morphing soft quadrotor. The proposed modeling preserves the physical interpretability and control structure of traditional quadrotor dynamics, while capturing the complex, time-varying behavior of pneumatically actuated soft arms. In SOFA, the soft pneumatically actuated arms are discretized as a tetrahedral mesh following an elastic material law that produces internal forces adequate to the real dynamic behavior of the body. Pneumatic actuation governed by both periodic and error-based control signals is applied within the internal cavities to analyze the morphing capability. Finally, a proportional-integral controller is proposed to study the controlled dynamic behavior and morphing capabilities of the pneumatic arm, wherein the pneumatic actuation to the soft arm is controlled to achieve the desired target position. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed novel modeling framework and the related controller design.