Pneumatic coding blocks enable programmability of electronics-free fluidic soft robots.

ABSTRACT: Decision-making based on environmental cues is a crucial feature of autonomous systems. Embodying this feature in soft robots poses nontrivial challenges on both hardware and software that can undermine the simplicity and autonomy of such devices. Existing pneumatic electronics-free soft robots have so far mostly been approached by using system fluidic circuit architectures analogous to digital electronics. Instead, here we design dedicated pneumatic coding blocks equivalent to If, If...break, and For software control statements, which are based on the analog nature of nonlinear mechanical components. We demonstrate that we can combine these coding blocks into programs to implement sequences and to control an electronics-free autonomous soft gripper that switches betwe

SUBMITTER: Picella S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11661450 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature