Impedance Control for Soft Robots

Soft robots equipped with variable stiffness actuators (VSA) are robust against impacts and are energetically efficient. However, due to the real springs in the joints, soft robots can oscillate even when the motors do not move. This makes the control of, for instance, the end-effector a challenging task. A new method is presented enabling to control the interaction behaviour of soft robots, which is called Elastic Structure Preserving Impedance (ESPi) control. The performance of ESPi control is demonstrated by numerous experiments on the VSA robotic arm David.This video is provided for „Elastic Structure Preserving Impedance (ESPi) Control for Compliantly Actuated Robots“ published at IROS 2018 by Manuel Keppler, Dominic Lakatos, Christian Ott, and Alin Albu-Schäffer. Video by Ferdinand Elhardt and Manuel Keppler.