The Soft Robotics Toolkit: Shared Resources for Research and Design
The Soft Robotics Toolkit: Shared Resources for Research and Design
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DOI：
10.1089/soro.2014.0010
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发表时间：
2014-09-01
期刊：
影响因子：
7.9
通讯作者：
Walsh, Conor J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Holland, Donal P.;Park, Evelyn J.;Walsh, Conor J.
本文介绍了软机器人工具包，一组开放访问的资源，以支持软机器人设备的设计，制造，建模，表征和控制的发展。该工具包的最终目的是支持研究人员在彼此的工作基础上建立，从而推进软机器人领域。另一个目的是支持教育工作者，并鼓励学生追求工程和科学的职业生涯，使资源尽可能容易获得。该工具包是通过一系列试点研究和用户测试开发和完善的。具体而言，这些资源被学生用于基于项目的医疗设备设计课程;来自各种背景的志愿者测试了工具包并提供反馈，软机器人研究人员使用了这些资源并为其开发做出了贡献。在所有用户研究中，收集了定性数据，并用于指导工具包的改进。这个测试和改进的过程产生了一个网站，其中包含描述通用硬件控制平台和特定软机器人组件设计的设计文档。在线文档包括下载的计算机辅助设计（CAD）文件，用于制造软设备的详细多媒体协议，用于建模和分析软执行器和传感器的教程和脚本，以及用于控制软设备的源代码。定性数据收集和重新设计的连续迭代已经证实，工具包文件足够详细，对来自广泛背景的研究人员有用。迄今为止，该工具包的重点主要是流体驱动机器人系统，但计划将其扩展到支持更广泛的软机器人技术。该工具包旨在作为一种社区资源，并邀请在这一领域工作的所有研究人员通过提供反馈和贡献新内容来指导其未来的发展。
This article describes the development of the Soft Robotics Toolkit, a set of open access resources to support the design, fabrication, modeling, characterization, and control of soft robotic devices. The ultimate aim of the toolkit is to support researchers in building upon each other's work, and thereby advance the field of soft robotics. An additional aim is to support educators and encourage students to pursue careers in engineering and science by making the resources as accessible as possible. The toolkit was developed and refined through a series of pilot studies and user tests. Specifically, the resources were used by students in a project-based medical device design course; volunteers from a variety of backgrounds tested the toolkit and provided feedback, and soft robotics researchers used the collection of resources and contributed to its development. Throughout all user studies, qualitative data were collected and used to guide improvements to the toolkit. This process of testing and refinement has resulted in a website containing design documentation describing general hardware control platforms and specific soft robotic component designs. The online documentation includes down-loadable computer-aided design (CAD) files, detailed multimedia protocols for the fabrication of soft devices, tutorials and scripts for modeling and analyzing soft actuators and sensors, and source code for controlling soft devices. Successive iterations of qualitative data gathering and redesign have confirmed that the toolkit documentation is sufficiently detailed to be useful for researchers from a wide range of backgrounds. To date, the focus of the toolkit has primarily been fluid-actuated robotic systems, but the plan is to expand it to support a wider range of soft robotic-enabling technologies. The toolkit is intended as a community resource, and all researchers working in this field are invited to guide its future development by providing feedback and contributing new content.