A Validated Physical Model For Real-Time Simulation of Soft Robotic Snakes
This work addresses the need for efficient simulation tools in robotics, particularly for soft robotic systems, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing multiphysics and constraint-based methods.
The authors tackled the problem of accurately simulating soft robotic snakes in real-time by developing a constraint-based dynamics model for pneumatic soft actuators, which they validated through static and dynamic experiments with a full robotic snake.
In this work we present a framework that is capable of accurately representing soft robotic actuators in a multiphysics environment in real-time. We propose a constraint-based dynamics model of a 1-dimensional pneumatic soft actuator that accounts for internal pressure forces, as well as the effect of actuator latency and damping under inflation and deflation and demonstrate its accuracy a full soft robotic snake with the composition of multiple 1D actuators. We verify our model's accuracy in static deformation and dynamic locomotion open-loop control experiments. To achieve real-time performance we leverage the parallel computation power of GPUs to allow interactive control and feedback.