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

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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.