Modeling and control of twisted and coiled artificial muscles for soft robotics

Twisted and Coiled Artificial Muscles (TCAMs) are an emerging class of lightweight and low-cost actuators with promising applications in soft robotics. However, the theoretical framework behind TCAMs in terms of actuation modeling and controls is still poorly explored. This paper presents a generalized physics-based dynamic model and an adaptive control algorithm for the actuation of TCAMs. The theoretical model is experimentally validated for different types of TCAMs in different working configurations. Additionally, TCAMs force and displacement outputs are controlled using ℒ_1 adaptive control architecture. A TCAMs-actuated soft device is finally manufactured and controlled to performed a desired task to prove the efficacy of the model and controller developed.