NRI: FND: Computational and Interactive Design of Soft Growing Robot Manipulators

该项目将有助于开发新的软体机器人操作器，帮助身体能力有限的人在家中进行日常生活活动。软机器人由柔性和可拉伸的材料制成，可以提高人类的安全性，降低成本，并能机械地适应环境，与传统的刚性机器人相比，这些都是显著的优势。然而，今天的软机器人还远远不能完成家庭操作任务；他们的灵活性有限，不能处理日常生活中遇到的许多物体的重量。该奖项支持开发新型机构和设计工具的研究，以创造能够无缝集成到家庭中并提供所需帮助的软机器人。该项目旨在通过以下方式改善人类健康和生活质量：(1)在家中帮助身体能力有限的人；(2)降低机器人操纵器的成本，使机器人能够被广泛的用户使用；(3)通过可控的机械顺应性和鲁棒性促进人类安全。这些特征对于改善公平获取技术非常重要，特别是在需要人与人之间保持物理距离的情况下。这个跨学科项目整合了机械工程和计算机科学，该项目将在课堂和研究中教育不同群体的学生，以扩大STEM的参与。该项目将开发一套模块化的新型软机器人组件，利用先前开发的可操纵的、尖端延伸的充气梁：连续连接、可变刚度控制和可变离散关节。每个组件都为3D操作提供了有价值的功能。由于为了制造一个机器人来完成特定任务而指定和组合这些组件的过程对于人类设计师来说太难了，因此研究团队将创建模拟和规划软件。该软件将实现考虑逆运动学、逆动力学和轨迹优化的计算设计过程，以开发总体设计和实时控制策略。在仿真和规划环境中，非机器人专家的用户将能够指定关键任务，测试机器人完成指定任务和新任务的能力，并影响设计以满足他们的需求。这种方法的有效性将通过用户研究和执行不同家庭任务的各种充气梁软3D机器人机械手的实施来证明。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project will contribute to the development of new soft robot manipulators that can assist people with limited physical abilities in their activities of daily living in the home. Soft robots are made of flexible and stretchable materials configured to increase human safety, lower cost, and mechanically adapt to their environments, which are significant advantages compared to traditional, rigid robots. However, today's soft robots are far from capable of performing household manipulation tasks; they have limited dexterity and cannot handle the weight of many objects encountered in daily life. This award supports research to develop novel mechanisms and design tools in order to create soft robots that seamlessly integrate into homes and provide needed assistance. This project aims to improve human health and quality of life by (1) assisting people with limited physical abilities in their homes, (2) lowering the cost of robot manipulators, toward making robots accessible to a wide spectrum of users, and (3) promoting human safety through controllable mechanical compliance and robustness. These features are important to improve equity in access to technology, especially in scenarios where physical distancing between humans is required. This interdisciplinary project integrates mechanical engineering and computer science, and the project will educate a diverse group of students in classes and research in order to broaden participation in STEM.This project will develop a modular set of new soft robot components that capitalize on previously developed steerable, tip-extending inflated beams: continuum links, variable stiffness control, and variable discrete joints. Each component contributes a valuable capability toward 3D manipulation. Because the process of specifying and combining these components in order to create a robot to achieve a particular task is too difficult for human designers to effectively navigate, the research team will create simulation and planning software. This software will enable a computational design process considering inverse kinematics, inverse dynamics, and trajectory optimization to develop both the overall design and the real-time control strategy. In the simulation and planning environment, users who are not robotics experts will be able to specify the critical tasks, test the ability of the robot to achieve the specified tasks as well as new tasks, and influence the design to be compatible with their needs. The effectiveness of this approach will be demonstrated through user studies and the implementation of a variety of inflated-beam soft 3D robot manipulators that perform different household tasks.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.