Boundary-controlled robotic surface with pneumatic fingers arranged in a U-shape

Abstract

Soft robots composed of flexible materials are superior to traditional rigid robots in flexibility and robustness. Soft robotic surfaces, which have a small thickness compared to their width, are studied for applications such as contact with objects and shape imitation. However, soft robot modeling is not easy due to the material’s flexibility, and for precision control, an assumption must be required for the robot’s geometry. To handle this problem, we propose a geometric assumption of constant mean curvature for robotic surfaces represented by a model capable of unifying four shapes: sphere, cylinder, unduloid, and nodoid. This paper will show a new soft robot with approximately constant mean curvature and demonstrate that the robot’s deformed shape satisfies that assumption.