ProSoRo: Proprioceptive Soft Robot

In this guide, you will get a brief introduction on how to build a proprioceptive soft robot (ProSoRo) hardware. The ProSoRo hardware consists of a metastructure, a camera, two LED lights, and serveral 3D-printing parts. You can find bill of materials (BOM), computer aided design (CAD) models, printed circuit boards (PCBs), and building steps below and start to get you own ProSoRo.

3. Camera calibration

Since the pose of the ArUco marker needs to be captured by the camera, it's necessary to calibrate the camera's matrix and distortion coefficients. It's recommended to follow the  OpenCV or MATLAB instructions.

4. PCB fabrication

There are two kinds of PCBs used in ProSoRos, including a fill light and an indicator light. The fill light is a 2-layer FR-4 PCB, while the indicator light is a 2-layer flex PCB. It's recommended to fabricate PCBs through JLCPCB or a local company in your region.

5. Assembly

Here we provide a video to show the assembly of ProSoRo.

6. Connecting to PC and Arduino 

The camera should be connected to a computer by a USB cable. The light PCBs should be connected to an Arduino board (for example, UNO R4 Minima) by DuPont wires. The connection example is shown as follows:

Currently, you have accomplished all construction procedures and acquired your own ProSoRo. The subsequent action is to follow the code in the Github repository to make it work.