A Soft Collaborative Robot for Contact‐based Intuitive Human Drag Teaching

• Published in: Advanced science Vol. 11; no. 24; pp. e2308835 - n/a
• Main Authors: Gong, Shoulu, Li, Wenbo, Wu, Jiahao, Feng, Bohan, Yi, Zhiran, Guo, Xinyu, Zhang, Wenming, Shao, Lei
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Germany John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01-06-2024; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Accuracy; Assembly lines; Collaboration; Design; drag teaching; exceptional repeatability; human collaboration; Kinematics; Pneumatics; Robotics; Robots; soft robotics; Teaching; ultra‐low hysteresis; exceptional repeatability; ultra‐low hysteresis; human collaboration; soft robotics; drag teaching
• ISSN: 2198-3844; 2198-3844
• DOI: 10.1002/advs.202308835

Soft material‐based robots, known for their safety and compliance, are expected to play an irreplaceable role in human‐robot collaboration. However, this expectation is far from real industrial applications due to their complex programmability and poor motion precision, brought by the super elasticity and large hysteresis of soft materials. Here, a soft collaborative robot (Soft Co‐bot) with intuitive and easy programming by contact‐based drag teaching, and also with exceptional motion repeatability (< 0.30% of body length) and ultra‐low hysteresis (< 2.0%) is reported. Such an unprecedented capability is achieved by a biomimetic antagonistic design within a pneumatic soft robot, in which cables are threaded to servo motors through tension sensors to form a self‐sensing system, thus providing both precise actuation and dragging‐aware collaboration. Hence, the Soft Co‐bots can be first taught by human drag and then precisely repeat various tasks on their own, such as electronics assembling, machine tool installation, etc. The proposed Soft Co‐bots exhibit a high potential for safe and intuitive human‐robot collaboration in unstructured environments, promoting the immediate practical application of soft robots.
The glamorous drag teaching in collaborative robots is for the first time made possible in soft material‐based robots, which are capable of repeating high‐precision industrial tasks after human manual teaching, promoting unrivaled safe and intuitive human‐robot collaboration.