Li Shuguang, Awale Samer A, Bacher Katharine E, Buchner Thomas J, Della Santina Cosimo, Wood Robert J, Rus Daniela
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Soft Robot. 2022 Apr;9(2):324-336. doi: 10.1089/soro.2020.0123. Epub 2021 Mar 25.
Today's use of large-scale industrial robots is enabling extraordinary achievement on the assembly line, but these robots remain isolated from the humans on the factory floor because they are very powerful, and thus dangerous to be around. In contrast, the soft robotics research community has proposed soft robots that are safe for human environments. The current state of the art enables the creation of small-scale soft robotic devices. In this article we address the gap between small-scale soft robots and the need for human-sized safe robots by introducing a new soft robotic module and multiple human-scale robot configurations based on this module. We tackle large-scale soft robots by presenting a modular and reconfigurable soft robotic platform that can be used to build fully functional and untethered meter-scale soft robots. These findings indicate that a new wave of human-scale soft robots can be an alternative to classic rigid-bodied robots in tasks and environments where humans and machines can work side by side with capabilities that include, but are not limited to, autonomous legged locomotion and grasping.
如今，大规模工业机器人的应用在装配线上取得了非凡成就，但这些机器人与工厂车间的人类保持隔离，因为它们功率强大，在其周围很危险。相比之下，软机器人研究群体提出了适用于人类环境的安全软机器人。目前的技术水平能够制造出小型软机器人设备。在本文中，我们通过引入一种新型软机器人模块以及基于该模块的多种人体尺寸机器人配置，来解决小型软机器人与人体尺寸安全机器人需求之间的差距。我们通过展示一个模块化且可重构的软机器人平台来攻克大型软机器人，该平台可用于构建功能完备且无需线缆连接的米级软机器人。这些发现表明，在人类和机器能够并肩工作的任务和环境中，新一代人体尺寸的软机器人可以成为传统刚体机器人的替代选择，其具备的能力包括但不限于自主腿部运动和抓取。
