This repository aims to provide a solution for designing a characterisation and control platform for pneumatic-driven soft robotic system. The platform design follows a top-down approach, starting from the analysis of the required functionalities of a platform to providing a specific design. Please note the design variety exists, only one solution is provided here. We aim to provide some insights and inspirations of designing a platform, which might be useful to the soft robots community, especially for new starters. We are welcoming to further comments/questions, and your contributions/solutions to buid a more general design framework.
This repository incudes the CAD files for the platform, the designed GUI and the Simulink example for the inverse kinematics implementation using MATLAB/Simulink. The details of each section can be found in the sub-folders.
The overeiew of the platform is shown:
The CAD file of the platform can be referred to the folder /CAD_of_the_platform.
The system architecture is:
Main components:
Pressure regulators (Camozzi K8P)
AC-DC converter (Mean Well, TP150)
Penumatic connector fitting (SMC, KDM10-04)
Slotted panel trunking (Betaduct)
Extruded aluminum, 20 mm x 20 mm
Shutdown button (Schneider Electric Harmony XB5)
Circuit breaker (Allen Bradley 1492 1492SPM MCB)
Plug socket (Contactum Grey 2 Gang Plug Socket)
Terminal blocks (RS PRO Blue DIN Rail Terminal Block)
Air pipes (RS PRO Compressed Air Pipe Blue Nylon 4mm)
Apart from using RC circuits to achieve DAC conversion, other solutions could be:
Other useful links are:
MATLAB DAQ Toolbox, to connect the USB-6341 to the MATLAB.
The GUI overview is presented here, and details can be found in folder /GUI_toolbox.
The paper is atttached (see the manuscript). The copyright has been tranferred to the IEEE, this work can be cited as follows:
J. Shi, W. Gaozhang, H. Jin, G. Shi, and H. Wurdemann. "Characterisation and control platform for pneumatically driven soft robots: Design and applications". IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), 2023.