Abstract
This article proposes a concept of soft interface for the connection between physical world where robots act and information world where robot intelligence is realized. First, this author summarizes modeling and control of object grasping and manipulation performed by a pair of soft fingertips. This author points out that a soft fingertip works as a soft interface for stable grasping and manipulation. This author also introduces two-stage control law for stable manipulation by a pair of 2-DOF fingers based on qualitative mapping between control variables and state variables. The proposed control law includes soft interface to cope with uncertainties in real world. This mapping-based approach is then applied to the control of a flexible arm based on polar coordinates.
