A framework for the kinematic modeling of soft material robots combining finite element analysis and piecewise constant curvature kinematics

Recent advances in the rapidly growing field of soft robotics have shown that robots made from soft materials surpass traditional rigid-link and continuum robots in performance in terms of adaptability and flexibility. Owing to their structure-inherent compliance, soft robots are also credited with being able to bridge the gap between humans and autonomous machines. However, for soft robots to become mass-producible in future days, rapid design and modeling tools are indispensable. Currently, the need for fast and versatile development tools is contradicted by a design flow that is mainly driven by experiments. To counter the perceived gap between experimentally and simulation driven research in soft robotics, we have developed a finite element based kinematic modeling framework for soft continuum robots that is applicable to a range of different designs. The corresponding design and modeling tool effectively combines the capabilities of both MATLAB and Abaqus via a Python interface. In this paper, we provide detailed description of the developed methodology and demonstrate the feasibility of the approach on a soft pneumatic actuator.