Reconciling distributed compliance with high-performance control in continuum soft robotics
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2026
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| _version_ | 1866914464468566016 |
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| author | Perfetta, Vito Daniele Feliu-Talegon, Daniel Shahabi, Ebrahim Della Santina, Cosimo |
| author_facet | Perfetta, Vito Daniele Feliu-Talegon, Daniel Shahabi, Ebrahim Della Santina, Cosimo |
| contents | High-performance closed-loop control of truly soft continuum manipulators has remained elusive. Experimental demonstrations have largely relied on sufficiently stiff, piecewise architectures in which each actuated segment behaves as a distributed yet effectively rigid element, while deformation modes beyond simple bending are suppressed. This strategy simplifies modeling and control, but sidesteps the intrinsic complexity of a fully compliant body and makes the system behave as a serial kinematic chain, much like a conventional articulated robot. An implicit conclusion has consequently emerged within the community: distributed softness and dynamic precision are incompatible. Here we show this trade-off is not fundamental. We present a highly compliant, fully continuum robotic arm - without hardware discretization or stiffness-based mode suppression - that achieves fast, precise task-space convergence under dynamic conditions. The platform integrates direct-drive actuation, a tendon routing scheme enabling coupled bending and twisting, and a structured nonlinear control architecture grounded in reduced-order strain modeling of underactuated systems. Modeling, actuation, and control are co-designed to preserve essential mechanical complexity while enabling high-bandwidth loop closure. Experiments demonstrate accurate, repeatable execution of dynamic Cartesian tasks, including fast positioning and interaction. The proposed system achieves the fastest reported task-execution speed among soft robots. At millimetric precision, execution speed increases nearly fourfold compared with prior approaches, while operating on a fully compliant continuum body. These results show that distributed compliance and high-performance dynamic control can coexist, opening a path toward truly soft manipulators approaching the operational capabilities of rigid robots without sacrificing morphological richness. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_16630 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Reconciling distributed compliance with high-performance control in continuum soft robotics Perfetta, Vito Daniele Feliu-Talegon, Daniel Shahabi, Ebrahim Della Santina, Cosimo Robotics High-performance closed-loop control of truly soft continuum manipulators has remained elusive. Experimental demonstrations have largely relied on sufficiently stiff, piecewise architectures in which each actuated segment behaves as a distributed yet effectively rigid element, while deformation modes beyond simple bending are suppressed. This strategy simplifies modeling and control, but sidesteps the intrinsic complexity of a fully compliant body and makes the system behave as a serial kinematic chain, much like a conventional articulated robot. An implicit conclusion has consequently emerged within the community: distributed softness and dynamic precision are incompatible. Here we show this trade-off is not fundamental. We present a highly compliant, fully continuum robotic arm - without hardware discretization or stiffness-based mode suppression - that achieves fast, precise task-space convergence under dynamic conditions. The platform integrates direct-drive actuation, a tendon routing scheme enabling coupled bending and twisting, and a structured nonlinear control architecture grounded in reduced-order strain modeling of underactuated systems. Modeling, actuation, and control are co-designed to preserve essential mechanical complexity while enabling high-bandwidth loop closure. Experiments demonstrate accurate, repeatable execution of dynamic Cartesian tasks, including fast positioning and interaction. The proposed system achieves the fastest reported task-execution speed among soft robots. At millimetric precision, execution speed increases nearly fourfold compared with prior approaches, while operating on a fully compliant continuum body. These results show that distributed compliance and high-performance dynamic control can coexist, opening a path toward truly soft manipulators approaching the operational capabilities of rigid robots without sacrificing morphological richness. |
| title | Reconciling distributed compliance with high-performance control in continuum soft robotics |
| topic | Robotics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.16630 |