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Actuators
Special Issues
High-Performance Compliant Robots and Soft Robots
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High-Performance Compliant Robots and Soft Robots

A special issue of Actuators (ISSN 2076-0825). This special issue belongs to the section "Actuators for Robotics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2021) | Viewed by 4246

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Hao Su

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Irwin Zahn Endowed Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of New York, City College, New York, NY, USA
Interests: design and control; soft robots; sensors and actuators; wearable robots; surgical robots
Dr. Grace Gu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Interests: composites; additive manufacturing; fracture mechanics; topology optimization; machine learning; finite element analysis; bioinspired materials

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

There has been increased interest in the research and applications of compliant and soft material robots. Inspired by biological organisms, systems with intrinsic compliance promise to push forward the boundaries of robots’ capabilities thanks to many unique properties. The ability to adapt their shape to the environment is a fundamental feature for safety and operation flexibility, but also for morphological computation, enabling the achievement of an enhanced dynamic performance with simplified architectures. However, most compliant and soft robots still show gaps in achievable performance in terms of force and speed. On the other hand, robots that rely on conventional electric motors for actuation, such as series elastic actuators, suffer from limitations like low energy efficiency and low bandwidth. These key challenges are shaping the research towards high-performance compliant and soft material robots, and their investigation is already providing new enabling tools for advanced applications.

This Special Issue targets high-quality publications (including review and survey papers) spanning the following topics:

- soft sensors and soft actuators

- series elastic actuator and robots

- smart materials and smart actuators for soft robots

- artificial muscles

- cable-driven, pneumatic, and hydraulic soft robots

- modeling and control of compliant and soft robots

- bio-inspired soft robots

- soft robot application, including, but not limited to, manipulation, mobility, wearable, surgical, and rehabilitation applications.

Dr. Hao Su
Dr. Grace Gu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Actuators is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • soft sensors and soft actuators
  • soft-material robots
  • pneumatic soft robots and hydraulic soft robots

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

17 pages, 7096 KiB  
Article
Active Loading Control Design for a Wearable Exoskeleton with a Bowden Cable for Transmission
by Zhipeng Wang, Seungmin Rho, Chifu Yang, Feng Jiang, Zhen Ding, Chunzhi Yi and Baichun Wei
Actuators 2021, 10(6), 108; https://doi.org/10.3390/act10060108 - 24 May 2021
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3591
Abstract
Exoskeletons with a Bowden cable for power transmission have the advantages of a concentrated mass and flexible movement. However, their integrated motor is disturbed by the Bowden cable’s friction, which limits the performance of the force loading response. In this paper, we solve [...] Read more.
Exoskeletons with a Bowden cable for power transmission have the advantages of a concentrated mass and flexible movement. However, their integrated motor is disturbed by the Bowden cable’s friction, which limits the performance of the force loading response. In this paper, we solve this problem by designing an outer-loop feedforward-feedback proportion-differentiation controller based on an inner loop disturbance observer. Firstly, the inner loop’s dynamic performance is equivalent to the designed nominal model using the proposed disturbance observer, which effectively compensates for the parameter perturbation and friction disturbance. Secondly, based on an analysis of the stability of the inner loop controller, we obtain the stability condition and discuss the influence of modeling errors on the inner loop’s dynamic performance. Thirdly, to avoid excessive noise from the force sensors being introduced into the designed disturbance observer, we propose the feedforward-feedback proportion-differentiation controller based on the nominal model and pole configuration, which improves the outer loop’s force loading performance. Experiments are conducted, which verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue High-Performance Compliant Robots and Soft Robots)
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