Soft Robotics help

[sayan]

Any soft robot devs here who I can ask for some help? I am a bit lost on the tutorial and need a bit of help. Thanx in advance

[Damien Marchal]

yes 😉

[sayan]

Hey Damien

So right now i have a few questions.
My first question is I saw some videos posted on the website where the soft robot moves exactly like the simulation. So is it connected somehow to the computer making the computer the controller of the soft robot?
My second question is if I have a soft robot fabricated with different material layer how exactly do I specify it. Is it done while generating the mesh diagram?

Thanx in advance

[sayan]

any updates?

[Hugo]

Hi @sayan957

Sorry for the delay, I guess Damien is currently away.

In the video you saw, the simulation computes the forces to send to the actuators/motors. So the answer is yes.

For your second question, this can be specified in the “ForceField” in SOFA where you can associate to each tetrahedron a different stiffness value.

Best

Hugo

[sayan]

So how does it send the forces to the actuators. Is it by the means of Arduino?
If any tutorial video/ link on how to do that is there, it would be great

[Hugo]

Hi @sayan957

This, I don’t know. But @damien-marchaluniv-lille1-fr should now this for sure.
Best

Hugo

[sayan]

Hi @Hugo
Is Damien available for help or probably any other soft robotics dev?
It would be great if I could get this thing cleared out.
Thanx in advance

[Hugo]

Hi @sayan957

Let me poke Damien for you.
He will reply here in the forum regarding your previous question.

Hugo

[Damien Marchal]

Hi @sayan, sorry to reply late, thank @hugo for the poke.

So to answer your first question, yes we are connecting physical robots to Sofa.
The simplest technical solution is to use USB->Arduino->motors. You can find pieces of explanation for this part in our tutoring web site: http://handsonsoftrobotics.lille.inria.fr/

Once you have an Arduino board there is a Sofa component you add in your simulation that will handle the communication.

About your second question about having soft robot fabricated with different material layer how exactly do we specify it. There is multiple approach, one consist in using a single mesh (tetrahedral/hexahedral) with different material properties in the different tetrahedral ‘cells’. The other approach is to mix different modelling like: FEM for one material, then Beam for a stiff spring, and connect all that thanks to sofa mapping and/or constraints.

Damien.

[Author]

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