Reconfigurable robotic modules for rapid design iteration of soft robot applications

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Soft robotics is expected to provide significant impact in the future of human-friendly robotics applications such as wearable devices for elderly body support, rehabilitations, medical robots, and other service robot applications. However most of the robot components such as motors, sensors, and controllers exist only under the assumptions of rigid regime, and they are not desirable for unconventional soft systems. This project aims to establish a developmental framework of reconfigurable robotic modules that can significantly speed up the design iterations of soft robot applications. The reconfigurable robotic modules should be comparatively small and flexible, such that they can be quickly applied to many variations of soft mechatronics devices by employing rapid fabrication methods such as 3D Printing and silicon moulding. The modules should also be supported by a software library and/or middleware for rapid development of controllers. The developed framework will be used for the case study of developing dextrous robotic hands for manipulation of unknown/unstructured objects.