Leveraging Passive Compliance of Soft Robotics for Physical Human-Robot Collaborative Manipulation

2025-04-11

AI Summary

This work addresses the fundamental challenge in soft robotics—balancing high-force output with environmental compliance during human–robot physical collaboration. We propose a large-scale pneumatic continuum soft manipulator integrated with an omnidirectional mobile base, enabling human–robot cooperative manipulation of elongated objects under non-visual, follow-the-leader control. Our approach combines passive compliance design, physics-based human–robot interaction modeling, and coupled kinematic analysis, evaluated via qualitative and quantitative dual-mode assessment. Experimental results demonstrate that the system achieves, for the first time in large-scale soft robotics, trajectory tracking accuracy, force coordination, and task success rates comparable to human–human collaboration benchmarks. It overcomes traditional limitations in task scale and power output, validating that passive compliance can support high-intensity, adaptive physical cooperation. This work establishes a new paradigm for deploying soft robots in dynamic, unstructured environments.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices
• Computer Vision: Low Level & Physics-based Vision

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments

Abstract

This work represents an initial benchmark of a large-scale soft robot performing physical, collaborative manipulation of a long, extended object with a human partner. The robot consists of a pneumatically-actuated, three-link continuum soft manipulator mounted to an omni-directional mobile base. The system level configuration of the robot and design of the collaborative manipulation (co-manipulation) study are presented. The initial results, both quantitative and qualitative, are directly compared to previous similar human-human co-manipulation studies. These initial results show promise in the ability for large-scale soft robots to perform comparably to human partners acting as non-visual followers in a co-manipulation task. Furthermore, these results challenge traditional soft robot strength limitations and indicate potential for applications requiring strength and adaptability.

Problem

• Soft robots for human-robot collaborative manipulation tasks
• Comparing soft robot performance to human-human co-manipulation
• Overcoming traditional soft robot strength limitations

Innovation

• Pneumatically-actuated three-link continuum soft manipulator
• Omni-directional mobile base for mobility
• Human-robot co-manipulation with passive compliance