Soft robotics has attracted growing attention due to its compliant structure, safe operation, and promising applications in constrained and unstructured environments. Octopus can employ its arm and suckers to catch prey in complex environments. Intrigued by these capabilities, we explored a new approach in sensing, modeling, and control of a bioinspired soft robot that enables both bending and suction for manipulating and perception of environmental load. By implementing EGaIn-based soft sensors with a crosswise manner on the soft tentacle, both sensory feedbacks of the elongation and expansion induced by the pneumatic inflation can be acquired. In this article, we built a variable curvature model for the bending kinematic reconstruction of the soft robot based on the feedback of the soft sensors. Both modeling and experimental results show that this crosswise sensor design allows for more accurate sensing of the soft robot's bending than the one-axis design. With the crosswise sensor, the robotic tentacle can distinguish the bending under external stimuli and internal self-actuation. We experimentally verified the sensory response as well as the accuracy of the self-sensing system and the model under freeload bending, externally loaded bending, and grasping conditions. By synergistically adopting the sensing of the vacuum-actuated suckers with the bending arm, we show that the soft robot can detect, suck, and bend to grasp objects. The results from this article may provide new design and application insights into the creation of autonomous soft manipulators with both bending and suction for tasks in constrained environments.

中文翻译：

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基于横向可伸缩传感器的触觉柔软的触手夹爪

软机器人由于其顺从的结构，安全的操作以及在受限和非结构化环境中的有希望的应用而引起了越来越多的关注。章鱼可以使用其手臂和吸盘在复杂的环境中捕食猎物。受到这些功能的吸引，我们探索了一种感测，建模和控制受生物启发的软机器人的新方法，该方法可同时进行弯曲和抽吸操作，以操纵和感知环境负荷。通过在软触手上以交叉方式实现基于EGaIn的软传感器，可以获取由气动充气引起的伸长和膨胀的两种感官反馈。在本文中，我们基于软传感器的反馈建立了用于软机器人弯曲运动学重建的可变曲率模型。建模和实验结果均表明，与单轴设计相比，这种横向传感器设计可以更精确地感测软机器人的弯曲。借助横向传感器，机器人触手可以区分外部刺激和内部自驱动下的弯曲。我们通过实验验证了在自由负载弯曲，外部负载弯曲和抓握条件下，自感系统和模型的感觉响应以及准确性。通过协同采用带有弯曲臂的真空致动吸盘的感应，我们表明软机器人可以检测，吸取和弯曲以抓取物体。本文的结果可能会提供新的设计和应用见解，以了解在受约束的环境中创建具有弯曲和吸力的自主软操纵器。