ROBOTICS

ASSIGNMENT 1
2016-MC-52
TRAJECTORY OPTIMIZATION FOR CABLE-
DRIVEN SOFT ROBOT
LOCOMOTION
WHAT HAS BEEN DONE?

• Prior work in soft robot locomotion makes heavy use of

hand-designed control trajectories
• Trajectory optimization formulation for a sufficiently realistic
model of a soft tentacle
PROBLEM

Since Compliance is a defining characteristic of biological systems so the

main Problems were:
• Understanding how to exploit soft materials as
effectively as living creatures
• How to recreate the complex array of motor
skills displayed in nature.
METHODOLOGY

• Model-based trajectory optimization

• Modeling soft robots using the Finite Element Method
• Leveraging sensitivity analysis
• Forward shooting method
RESULTS

We used our system to design locomotion trajectories for

two soft robot examples, and built physical prototypes of
each
IMPROVEMENTS

• Reparameterization
• Reduction of search space
• Potentially superior non-spline or asymmetric trajectories