Modeling and Actuation of Cable-driven Silicone Soft Robots

Abstract

In this paper we present a framework for modeling cable-driven soft robots fabricated from silicone rubber - an incompressible material. Our forward simulation model can use either the standard or the mixed formulation of the finite element method (FEM). The latter prevents volumetric locking for incompressible materials and is more accurate for low resolution meshes. Hence, we show that mixed FEM is well suited for estimating elastic parameters and simulator validation. We also introduce a cable actuation model using barycentric coordinates and then use it to solve some simple control problems.