Title: Decentralized Control of Octopus-Inspired Soft Robot Arms
Abstract: Octopus arms provide a source of inspiration for the design of soft continuum robots, which have many possible uses in complex manipulation, inspection, and locomotion tasks that require high dexterity and flexibility as well as safe operation in proximity to humans. Octopuses employ a unique decentralized nervous system, which is organized into segments of repeating neuromuscular structures along the length of each arm, to control their arms for a diverse set of behaviors. This talk presents decentralized model-based controllers for soft robot arms with a similarly segmented design, in which each segment has local sensing and actuation, is independently controllable, and can transmit information to neighboring segments. Control objectives include position regulation and trajectory tracking by the robot's tip and 3D configuration tracking by the entire robot. The controllers are validated in numerical simulations and in physical experiments with a miniature hydrogel-actuated cantilevered robot arm and a silicone robot arm with distributed pneumatic actuation.