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arXiv · 2504.00222

PneuDrive: An Embedded Pressure Control System and Modeling Toolkit for Large-Scale Soft Robots

Curtis C. Johnson·Daniel G. Cheney·Dallin L. Cordon·Marc D. Killpack
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Abstract

In this paper, we present a modular pressure control system called PneuDrive that can be used for large-scale, pneumatically-actuated soft robots. The design is particularly suited for situations which require distributed pressure control and high flow rates. Up to four embedded pressure control modules can be daisy-chained together as peripherals on a robust RS-485 bus, enabling closed-loop control of up to 16 valves with pressures ranging from 0-100 psig (0-689 kPa) over distances of more than 10 meters. The system is configured as a C++ ROS node by default. However, independent of ROS, we provide a Python interface with a scripting API for added flexibility. We demonstrate our implementation of PneuDrive through various trajectory tracking experiments for a three-joint, continuum soft robot with 12 different pressure inputs. Finally, we present a modeling toolkit with implementations of three dynamic actuation models, all suitable for real-time simulation and control. We demonstrate the use of this toolkit in customizing each model with real-world data and evaluating the performance of each model. The results serve as a reference guide for choosing between several actuation models in a principled manner. A video summarizing our results can be found here: https://bit.ly/3QkrEqO.

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Curtis C. Johnson, Daniel G. Cheney, Dallin L. Cordon, Marc D. Killpack. 2025-03-31. PneuDrive: An Embedded Pressure Control System and Modeling Toolkit for Large-Scale Soft Robots. https://doi.org/10.1109/robosoft60065.2024.10521958

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