Manipulability and Robustness Optimization of the Cable-Driven Redundant Soft Manipulator

Redundancy makes soft manipulators manage to complete a variety of tasks in complex environments. However, a pseudo-inverse kinematics controller for redundant soft manipulators simply maximizes the manipulability while ignoring some material constraints, e.g., actuation saturation and control noise. As manipulability is the indicator for the dexterity of motion in all directions of the redundant soft manipulators, this work proposes an optimization based controller, where the manipulability and robustness are optimized for a cable-driven redundant soft manipulator to adapt actuation saturation and control noise. Experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.