Trajectory Generation for Underactuated Soft Robot Manipulators using Discrete Elastic Rod Dynamics
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866914416625188864 |
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| author | Liu, Beibei Dickson, Akua K. Jing, Ran Sabelhaus, Andrew P. |
| author_facet | Liu, Beibei Dickson, Akua K. Jing, Ran Sabelhaus, Andrew P. |
| contents | Soft robots are well suited for contact-rich tasks due to their compliance, yet this property makes accurate and tractable modeling challenging. Planning motions with dynamically-feasible trajectories requires models that capture arbitrary deformations, remain computationally efficient, and are compatible with underactuation. However, existing approaches balance these properties unevenly: continuum rod models provide physical accuracy but are computationally demanding, while reduced-order approximations improve efficiency at the cost of modeling fidelity. To address this, our work introduces a control-oriented reformulation of Discrete Elastic Rod (DER) dynamics for soft robots, and a method to generate trajectories with these dynamics. The proposed formulation yields a control-affine representation while preserving certain first-principles force-deformation relationships. As a result, the generated trajectories are both dynamically feasible and consistent with the underlying actuation assumptions. We present our trajectory generation framework and validate it experimentally on a pneumatic soft robotic limb. Hardware results demonstrate consistently improved trajectory tracking performance over a constant-curvature-based baseline, particularly under complex actuation conditions. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_22604 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Trajectory Generation for Underactuated Soft Robot Manipulators using Discrete Elastic Rod Dynamics Liu, Beibei Dickson, Akua K. Jing, Ran Sabelhaus, Andrew P. Robotics Soft robots are well suited for contact-rich tasks due to their compliance, yet this property makes accurate and tractable modeling challenging. Planning motions with dynamically-feasible trajectories requires models that capture arbitrary deformations, remain computationally efficient, and are compatible with underactuation. However, existing approaches balance these properties unevenly: continuum rod models provide physical accuracy but are computationally demanding, while reduced-order approximations improve efficiency at the cost of modeling fidelity. To address this, our work introduces a control-oriented reformulation of Discrete Elastic Rod (DER) dynamics for soft robots, and a method to generate trajectories with these dynamics. The proposed formulation yields a control-affine representation while preserving certain first-principles force-deformation relationships. As a result, the generated trajectories are both dynamically feasible and consistent with the underlying actuation assumptions. We present our trajectory generation framework and validate it experimentally on a pneumatic soft robotic limb. Hardware results demonstrate consistently improved trajectory tracking performance over a constant-curvature-based baseline, particularly under complex actuation conditions. |
| title | Trajectory Generation for Underactuated Soft Robot Manipulators using Discrete Elastic Rod Dynamics |
| topic | Robotics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22604 |