A Novel Modular Cable-Driven Soft Robotic Arm with Multi-Segment Reconfigurability
Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Mississippi State University（农业与生物工程系，密苏里州立大学）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University（电气与计算机工程系，密苏里州立大学）；Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Dallas, Texas A&M University（德克萨斯A&M大学达拉斯分校农业与生命科学研究中心）
This paper presents a novel, modular, cable-driven soft robotic arm featuring multi-segment reconfigurability. The proposed architecture enables a stackable system with independent segment control, allowing scalable adaptation to diverse structural and application requirements. The system is fabricated from soft silicone material and incorporates embedded tendon-routing channels with a protective dual-helical tendon structure. Experimental results showed that modular stacking substantially expanded the reachable workspace: relative to the single-segment arm, the three-segment configuration achieved up to a 13-fold increase in planar workspace area and a 38.9-fold increase in workspace volume. Furthermore, this study investigated the effect of silicone stiffness on actuator performance. The results revealed a clear trade-off between compliance and stiffness: softer silicone improved bending flexibility, while stiffer silicone improved structural rigidity and load-bearing stability. These results highlight the potential of stiffness tuning to balance compliance and strength for configuring scalable, reconfigurable soft robotic arms.
Direct Data-Driven Predictive Control for a Three-dimensional Cable-Driven Soft Robotic Arm
Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering, Mississippi State University（农业与生物工程系，密苏里州立大学）；Department of Mechanical Engineering, Michigan State University（机械工程系，密苏里州立大学）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University（电气与计算机工程系，密苏里州立大学）
D3-ARM: High-Dynamic, Dexterous and Fully Decoupled Cable-driven Robotic Arm
Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University（清华大学深圳国际研究生院人工智能与机器人中心）；School of Advanced Manufacturing, Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学先进制造学院）
Tecnalia France（法国泰克纳利亚）；LAAS-CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心自动化系统与机器人实验室）；University of Toulouse（图卢兹大学）；LIRMM（蒙彼利埃大学与法国国家科学研究中心联合机器人与微电子机械系统实验室）；Université de Montpellier（蒙彼利埃大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）
A continuous collision checking method for a cable-driven parallel robot with an embarked robotic arm is proposed in this paper. The method aims at validating paths by checking for collisions between any pair of robot bodies (mobile platform, cables, and arm links). For a pair of bodies, an upper bound on their relative velocity and a lower bound on the distance between the bodies are computed and used to validate a portion of the path. These computations are done repeatedly until a collision is found or the path is validated. The method is integrated within the Humanoid Path Planner (HPP) sof…
Robotic manipulation of tethered tools is widely seen in robotic work cells. They may cause excess strain on the tool's cable or undesired entanglements with the robot's arms. This paper presents a manipulation planner with cable orientation constraints for tethered tools suspended by tool balancers. The planner uses orientation constraints to limit the bending of the balancer's cable while the robot manipulates a tool and places it in a desired pose. The constraints reduce entanglements and decrease the torque induced by the cable on the robot joints. Simulation and real-world experiments sho…
Osaka University（大阪大学）；National Inst. of AIST（国立先进工业科学技术研究所）
In this paper, we present a planner for a master dual-arm robot to manipulate tethered tools with an assistant dual-arm robot's help. The assistant robot provides assistance to the master robot by manipulating the tool cable and avoiding collisions. The provided assistance allows the master robot to perform tool placements on the robot workspace table to regrasp the tool, which would typically fail since the tool cable tension may change the tool positions. It also allows the master robot to perform tool handovers, which would normally cause entanglements or collisions with the cable and the e…
A Versatile Neural Network Configuration Space Planning and Control Strategy for Modular Soft Robot Arms
Biorobotics Institute and the Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI（生物机器人研究所和机器人与人工智能卓越部门）；Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna（圣安娜高等学院）；CREATE Lab（CREATE实验室）；EPFL（瑞士联邦理工学院）
Data-Driven MPC with Data Selection for Flexible Cable-Driven Robotic Arms
Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University（人工智能与机器人中心，深圳国际研究生院，清华大学）；Department of Advanced Manufacturing, Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University（先进制造系，深圳国际研究生院，清华大学）
Hierarchical Whole-body Control of the cable-Suspended Aerial Manipulator endowed with Winch-based Actuation
German Aerospace Center (DLR)（德国航空航天中心（DLR））；University of Twente（特文特大学）；Dextrous Robotics Inc.（灵巧机器人公司）；Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica（航空技术研究所）；Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)（韩国科学技术院（KAIST））；TU Wien（维也纳工业大学）
A physics-informed, vision-based method to reconstruct all deformation modes in slender bodies
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering（电气与计算机工程学院）；Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）；Twentieth Century Fox（二十世纪福克斯）；Starfleet Academy（星际舰队学院）；Tyrell Inc.（泰勒尔公司）
Adaptive Gravity Compensation Control of a Cable-Driven Upper-Arm Soft Exosuit
Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani（皮拉尼贝拉理工学院）；PricewaterhouseCoopers（普华永道）；Indian Institute of Technology Delhi（印度理工学院德里分校）；All India Institute of Medical Sciences（全印医学科学学院）
With worldwide implementation, millions of surgeries are assisted by surgical robots. The cable-drive mechanism on many surgical robots allows flexible, light, and compact arms and tools. However, the slack and stretch of the cables and the backlash of the gears introduce inevitable errors from motor poses to joint poses, and thus forwarded to the pose and orientation of the end-effector. In this paper, a learning-based calibration using a deep neural network is proposed, which reduces the unloaded pose RMSE of joints 1, 2, 3 to 0.3003 deg, 0.2888 deg, 0.1565 mm, and loaded pose RMSE of joints…
Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Tech（佐治亚理工学院机器人与智能机器研究所）；CNRS IRL 2958, Georgia Tech Lorraine（法国国家科学研究中心2958国际联合实验室，佐治亚理工洛林分校）；School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Tech（佐治亚理工学院土木与环境工程学院）
We propose a novel hybrid cable-based robot with manipulator and camera for high-accuracy, medium-throughput plant monitoring in a vertical hydroponic farm and, as an example application, demonstrate non-destructive plant mass estimation. Plant monitoring with high temporal and spatial resolution is important to both farmers and researchers to detect anomalies and develop predictive models for plant growth. The availability of high-quality, off-the-shelf structure-from-motion (SfM) and photogrammetry packages has enabled a vibrant community of roboticists to apply computer vision for non-destr…
Norwegian University of Life Sciences（挪威生命科学大学）；University of Minnesota（明尼苏达大学）
This paper presents a novel cable-driven gripper with perception capabilities for autonomous harvesting of strawberries. Experiments show that the gripper allows for more accurate and faster picking of strawberries compared to existing systems. The gripper consists of four functional parts for sensing, picking, transmission, and storing. It has six fingers that open to form a closed space to swallow a target strawberry and push other surrounding berries away from the target. Equipped with three IR sensors, the gripper controls a manipulator arm to correct for positional error, and can thus pic…
UC Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；UCSF East Bay（加州大学旧金山分校东湾）；SRI International（斯坦福国际研究院）
Automation of surgical subtasks using cable-driven robotic surgical assistants (RSAs) such as Intuitive Surgical's da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) is challenging due to imprecision in control from cable-related effects such as cable stretching and hysteresis. We propose a novel approach to efficiently calibrate such robots by placing a 3D printed fiducial coordinate frames on the arm and end-effector that is tracked using RGBD sensing. To measure the coupling and history-dependent effects between joints, we analyze data from sampled trajectories and consider 13 approaches to modeling. These model…
ForwardDLO: Model-Based Bimanual Shape Matching of Unconstrained Deformable Linear Objects
Technical University of Darmstadt（达姆施塔特工业大学）；Honda Research Institute Europe GmbH（本田欧洲研究院有限公司）；Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)（坎皮纳斯州立大学）；German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI)（德国人工智能研究中心）；Robotics Institute Germany (RIG)（德国机器人研究所）；Centre for Cognitive Science（认知科学中心）
ATDM:An Anthropomorphic Aerial Tendon-driven Manipulator with Low-Inertia and High-Stiffness
Research Institute of Intelligent Control and Systems, Harbin Institute of Technology（哈尔滨工业大学智能控制与系统研究所）；Peng Cheng Laboratory（鹏城实验室）；Ningbo Institute of Intelligent Equipment Technology Co., Ltd.（宁波智能装备技术研究院有限公司）
