Reconciling distributed compliance with high-performance control in continuum soft robotics

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.16630v1
• Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2026 15:01:04 GMT
• Title: Reconciling distributed compliance with high-performance control in continuum soft robotics
• Abstract summary: We present a highly compliant, fully continuum robotic arm without hardware discretization or stiffness-based mode suppression.<n>The platform integrates direct-drive actuation, a tendon routing scheme enabling coupled bending and twisting, and a structured nonlinear control architecture.<n>The proposed system achieves the fastest reported task-execution speed among soft robots.
• Score: 5.559127468747317
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: High-performance closed-loop control of truly soft continuum manipulators has remained elusive. Experimental demonstrations have largely relied on sufficiently stiff, piecewise architectures in which each actuated segment behaves as a distributed yet effectively rigid element, while deformation modes beyond simple bending are suppressed. This strategy simplifies modeling and control, but sidesteps the intrinsic complexity of a fully compliant body and makes the system behave as a serial kinematic chain, much like a conventional articulated robot. An implicit conclusion has consequently emerged within the community: distributed softness and dynamic precision are incompatible. Here we show this trade-off is not fundamental. We present a highly compliant, fully continuum robotic arm - without hardware discretization or stiffness-based mode suppression - that achieves fast, precise task-space convergence under dynamic conditions. The platform integrates direct-drive actuation, a tendon routing scheme enabling coupled bending and twisting, and a structured nonlinear control architecture grounded in reduced-order strain modeling of underactuated systems. Modeling, actuation, and control are co-designed to preserve essential mechanical complexity while enabling high-bandwidth loop closure. Experiments demonstrate accurate, repeatable execution of dynamic Cartesian tasks, including fast positioning and interaction. The proposed system achieves the fastest reported task-execution speed among soft robots. At millimetric precision, execution speed increases nearly fourfold compared with prior approaches, while operating on a fully compliant continuum body. These results show that distributed compliance and high-performance dynamic control can coexist, opening a path toward truly soft manipulators approaching the operational capabilities of rigid robots without sacrificing morphological richness.

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