Kinematic Modeling and Visual Sensing of Multi-DOF Robot Manipulator with Patterned Artificial Muscle

We describe a two-dimensional (2-D) multi-degree-of-freedom (DOF) robot manipulator made from a soft polymer gel actuator, which we call an artificial muscle. The independent voltage control of three segments of patterned electrodes on the artificial muscle enables independent partial bending motions of each segment and realizes a multi-DOF control of the manipulator. We introduce the kinematic modeling of these multi-DOF bending motions and propose visual feedback control of the artificial muscle. For high-speed visual feedback, we have developed a visual sensing system with a 1ms sampling rate. Finally, we show the experimental results of the visual sensing and kinematic modeling of the bending motions of the manipulator.