Geometric Theory of Slender Soft Robots (with applications)
Abstract
Many modern robotic systems feature continuous deformable elements whose dynamics cannot be neglected. Those include robots with highly deformable links, continuum and soft robots for medical applications and industrial inspection, rigid robots manipulating linear deformable objects such as strings and cables, and many more. A solid theoretical understanding of the mechanics and dynamics of this class of robots is essential to execute advanced optimization, control, and learning algorithms that can ultimately unlock their full potential. In this talk, I will present a unified geometric theory of hybrid softrigid robots that can be seen as the direct extension of the geometric theory of rigid robots to this new class of systems. I will discuss various strategies to reduce the order of the resulting dynamic model, exploring the implications of different strain discretization and the benefits of an optimal linear parametrization based on data. To validate the theory, I will showcase several experimental and simulation results underpinned by the fast MATLAB toolbox SoRoSim that we developed for this purpose, and has been recently updated to include the analytical derivative of the robot governing equations. I will conclude with a brief overview of some applications of the model for soft robots’ design and sensing.
Short Bio
Dr. Federico Renda is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Before joining Khalifa University, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 2014. He obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 2007 and 2009, respectively. Dr. Renda has been a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS), the National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (INRIA, Lille), and others. He has been appointed as Associate Editor and Program Committee Member of important robotics journals and conferences, such as the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR) and the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), to name a few. Dr. Renda’s research interests encompass the study of multibody dynamical systems, including the modeling and control of complex soft and underwater robots. His research is applied to the agile motion of highly deformable manipulators as well as underwater swarm robotics for persistent surveillance of large submerged structures.