Motion Control of Soft Robots

Motion Control of Soft Robots provides an overview of the general concepts and most recent technological updates in soft robot motion control. The book provides systematic coverage of theoretical and practical aspects in system modeling and motion control strategies, presenting novel ideas, methods, and future outlook related to motion control of soft actuators and robots, including model-based control, model-free control, and bioinspired control. This book is useful for researchers, engineers, and students of robotics who can expect to learn how to design and implement various techniques to obtain solutions to control problems in soft robot control and nonlinear system control.

• Gives an overview of soft robotics, the modeling approaches for soft robots, as well as motion control techniques for soft robots like model-based control, model-free control, and bioinspired control
• Investigates recent novel ideas and methods for the design and implantation of motion control for soft actuators/robots
• Presents several soft robot designs, using them as examples to illustrate the controller design for soft robots where detailed simulation or/and experimental results are given

Wenyu Liang is a scientist at the Institute for Infocomm Research, A*STAR, Singapore, and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore. He has authored or co-authored over 90 publications, including one book, two book chapters and more than 40 published journal papers. He has also received several awards related to innovation such as Merit Award, Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors’ Award 2016: Open Section, etc. His research interests mainly include robotics, precision motion control, and force/tactile control with applications in industrial, medical, and agricultural technology.

Jiawei Cao is a research scientist at Temasek Laboratories, National University of Singapore. He has authored and co-authored more than 20 publications on robotics, including highly ranked journal papers and top conference papers. He also serves as reviewers for several international journals and top conferences. His research interests include soft robotics, bioinspired motion control, multi-robot systems, multi-agent reinforcement learning and autonomous navigation.

Qinyuan Ren is a robotics scientist at the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), A*STAR, in Singapore, and professor at the College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, in China. He is a principal investigator (PI) of several national Mega-fund projects and serves as the editorial member for two international journals. He is a Senior IEEE Member now and his research interests include nonlinear systems, bioinspired and biomimetic robotics, motion control and artificial nervous system.

Wenxin Zhu is a PhD candidate at the College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, China. She served as a research assistant at the Institute for Infocomm Research, A*STAR, Singapore from 2023 to 2024 and was involved in organizing several international conferences. Her research interests include motion control, human-robot interaction, and soft robotics.