Soft Robotics:Morphology and Morphology-inspired Motion Strategy

Robotics has aroused huge attention since the 1950s.Irrespective of the uniqueness that industrial applications exhibit,conventional rigid robots have displayed noticeable limitations,particularly in safe cooperation as well as with environmental adaption.Accordingly,scientists have shifted their focus on soft robotics to apply this type of robots more effectively in unstructured environments.For decades,they have been committed to exploring sub-fields of soft robotics(e.g.,cutting-edge techniques in design and fabrication,accurate modeling,as well as advanced control algorithms).Although scientists have made many different efforts,they share the common goal of enhancing applicability.The presented paper aims to brief the progress of soft robotic research for readers interested in this field,and clarify how an appropriate control algorithm can be produced for soft robots with specific morphologies.This paper,instead of enumerating existing modeling or control methods of a certain soft robot prototype,interprets for the relationship between morphology and morphology-dependent motion strategy,attempts to delve into the common issues in a particular class of soft robots,and elucidates a generic solution to enhance their performance.

Development of fractures in soft rock surrounding a roadway and their control

As the excavation of roadway, new fractures will be formed and the pre-existing fractures extend with the redistribution of stress in surrounding rocks. Eventually, fracture zone and bed separation are formed in rocks because of the developed fractures. Therefore, mastering the fracture evolution of surrounding rocks is very important to maintain the stability of roadway. The surrounding rocks of main haulage road- way in a certain coal mine is so broken and loose that the supporting is very difficult. Based on compre- hensive anal[ysis of the engineering geological conditions, a sight instrument was used to observe the fractures of internal surrounding rocks, Four indices, i.e., the width of fracture zone W, the number of fractures n, the width of fractures d and rock fracture designation RFD, are put forward to evaluate the fracture dewelopment. According to the evolution rules of the soft rock roadway from this paper, control principles by stages and by regions are presented through the research. At the same time, the best time of grouting reinforcement is determined on the basis of fracture saturation. Field practice shows that the roadway can satisfy normal production during service periods by suitable first support and grouting reinforcement.

Failure mechanism of Mesozoic soft rock roadway in Shajihai coal mine and its surrounding rock control

In view of the buckling failure caused by large deformation of Mesozoic soft rock roadway in Shajihai mining area, such as serious roof fall, rib spalling, floor heave, etc., based on the detail site investigation,theoretical analysis, mineral composition test, microstructure test, water-physical property test and field experiments were carried out. And we revealed the compound failure mechanism of Mesozoic soft rock roadway in Shajihai mining area, namely the molecule expansion-shear slip of weak structural plane-construction disturbance. On this basis, the coupling support technology whose core is constant resistance with large deformation bolt was proposed. The feature of this supporting technology is that a new type of structural composite material was used, which makes the supporting system not only has the ideal deformation characteristics, but also has high supporting resistance. Thus the fully release of plastic energy within surrounding rock and reasonable control of the thickness of the plastic ring were realized. Then the differential deformation between the surrounding rock and support was eliminated by the secondary coupling support of bolt–mesh–cable, and the bolt with high strength was applied in the base angle to control floor. Eventually the collaborative bearing system of surrounding rock–support was formed. Through field tests the validity and rationality of support was also verified.

Failure mechanism and control technology of water-immersed roadway in high-stress and soft rock in a deep mine

Aiming at soft rock ground support issues under conditions of high stress and long-term water immersion, the ground failure mechanism is revealed by taking the deep-water sumps of Jiulong Mine as the engineering background and employing field investigation, tests of rock structure, mechanical properties and mineral composition. The main factors leading to the surrounding rock failure include the high and complex stress state of the water sumps, high-clay content and water-weakened rock, and the unreasonable support design. In this paper, the broken and fractured rock mass near roadway opening is considered as ground small-structure, and deep stable rock mass as ground large-structure. A support technology focusing on cutting off the water, strengthening the small structure of the rock and transferring the large structure of the rock is proposed. The proposed support technology of interconnecting the large and small structures, based on high-strength bolts, high-stiffness shotcrete layer plugging water,strengthening the small structure with deep-hole grouting and shallow-hole grouting, highpretensioned cables tensioned twice to make the large and small structures bearing the pressure evenly,channel-steel and high-pretensioned cables are used to control floor heave. The numerical simulation and field test show that this support system can control the rock deformation of the water sumps and provide technical support to similar roadway support designs.

Dynamics and nonlinear control of space electromagnetic docking

Space electromagnetic docking technology, free of propellant and plume contamination, offers continuous, reversible and synchronous controllability, which is widely applied in the future routine on-orbit servicing missions. Due to the inherent nonlinearities, couplings and uncertainties of an electromagnetic force model, the dynamics and control problems of them are difficult. A new modeling approach for relative motion dynamics with intersatellite force is proposed. To resolve these control problems better, a novel nonlinear control method for soft space electro-magnetic docking is proposed, which combines merits of artificial potential function method, Lyapunov theory and extended state observer. In addition, the angular momentum management problem of space electromagnetic docking and approaches of handling it by exploiting the Earth＇s magnetic torque are investigated. Finally, nonlinear simulation results demonstrate the feasibility of the dynamic model and the novel nonlinear control method.

SOFT CONTROL ON COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR OF A GROUP OF AUTONOMOUS AGENTS BY A SHILL AGENT

This paper asks a new question： how can we control the collective behavior of self-organized multi-agent systems？ We try to answer the question by proposing a new notion called ＇Soft Control＇ which keeps the local rule of the existing agents in the system. We show the feasibility of soft control by a case study. Consider the simple but typical distributed multi-agent model proposed by Vicsek et al. for flocking of birds： each agent moves with the same speed but with different headings which are updated using a local rule based on the average of its own heading and the headings of its neighbors. Most studies of this model are about the self-organized collective behavior, such as synchronization of headings. We want to intervene in the collective behavior （headings） of the group by soft control. A specified method is to add a special agent, called a ＇Shill＇, which can be controlled by us but is treated as an ordinary agent by other agents. We construct a control law for the shill so that it can synchronize the whole group to an objective heading. This control law is proved to be effective analytically and numerieally. Note that soft control is different from the approach of distributed control. It is a natural way to intervene in the distributed systems. It may bring out many interesting issues and challenges on the control of complex systems.

ROBUST CONSENSUS AND SOFT CONTROL OF MULTI-AGENT SYSTEMS WITH NOISES

This paper considers the problem of robust consensus for a basic class of multi-agent systems with bounded disturbances and with directed information flow. A necessary and sufficient condition on the robust consensus is first presented, which is then applied to the analysis, control and decision making problems in the noise environments. In particular, the authors show how a soft control technique will synchronize a group of autonomous mobile agents without changing the existing local rule of interactions, and without assuming any kind of connectivity conditions on the system trajectories.

Soft-Control for Collective Opinion of Weighted DeGroot Model

The DeGroot model is a classic model to study consensus of opinion in a group of individuals(agents). Consensus can be achieved under some circumstances. But when the group reach consensus with a convergent opinion value which is not what we expect, how can we intervene the system and change the convergent value? In this paper a mechanism named soft control is first introduced in opinion dynamics to guide the group's opinion when the population are given and evolution rules are not allowed to change. According to the idea of soft control, one or several special agents,called shills, are added and connected to one or several normal agents in the original group. Shills act and are treated as normal agents. The authors prove that the change of convergent opinion value is decided by the initial opinion and influential value of the shill, as well as how the shill connects to normal agents. An interesting and counterintuitive phenomenon is discovered: Adding a shill with an initial opinion value which is smaller(or larger) than the original convergent opinion value dose not necessarily decrease(or increase) the convergent opinion value under some conditions. These conditions are given through mathematical analysis and they are verified by the numerical tests. The authors also find out that the convergence speed of the system varies when a shill is connected to different normal agents. Our simulations show that it is positively related to the degree of the connected normal agent in scale-free networks.

A policy gradient algorithm integrating long and short-term rewards for soft continuum arm control

The soft continuum arm has extensive application in industrial production and human life due to its superior safety and flexibility. Reinforcement learning is a powerful technique for solving soft arm continuous control problems, which can learn an effective control policy with an unknown system model. However, it is often affected by the high sample complexity and requires huge amounts of data to train, which limits its effectiveness in soft arm control. An improved policy gradient method, policy gradient integrating long and short-term rewards denoted as PGLS, is proposed in this paper to overcome this issue. The shortterm rewards provide more dynamic-aware exploration directions for policy learning and improve the exploration efficiency of the algorithm. PGLS can be integrated into current policy gradient algorithms, such as deep deterministic policy gradient(DDPG). The overall control framework is realized and demonstrated in a dynamics simulation environment. Simulation results show that this approach can effectively control the soft arm to reach and track the targets. Compared with DDPG and other model-free reinforcement learning algorithms, the proposed PGLS algorithm has a great improvement in convergence speed and performance. In addition, a fluid-driven soft manipulator is designed and fabricated in this paper, which can verify the proposed PGLS algorithm in real experiments in the future.

Control Model of Bloom Dynamic Soft Reduction

There are significant effects of process parameters on internal qualities of bloom, and these process parameters are as follows. position and reduction amount, reduction distribution, reduction rate, and so on. Developing a control model is the key to apply soft reduction technology successfully. As the research object, 360 mm ×450 mm bloom caster in PISCO （Panzhihua Iron and Steel Co. ） has been studied, and the research method for control model of dynamic soft reduction has been proposed. On the basis of solidification and heat transfer model, the position of soft reduction and reduction distribution of each frame are determined according to the bloom temperature distribution and solid fraction in bloom center calculated. Production practice shows that the ratio of center porosity which is less than or equal to 1.0, increased to 97.27%, ratio of central segregation which is less than or equal to 0.5, increased to 80.91%, and ratio of central carbon segregation index which is more than or equal to 1.10, decreased to 4% with the applying model of dynamic soft reduction.

Control of soft X-ray high harmonic spectrum by using two-color laser pulses

We demonstrate the suppression of soft X-ray high harmonics generated by two-color laser pulses interacting with Ne gas in a gas cell. We show that harmonic suppression can occur at the proper combination of the propagation distance and gas pressure. The physical mechanism behind is the phase mismatch between ＂short＂-trajectory harmonics generated at the early and later times through the interplay of geo- metric phase, dispersion, and plasma effects. In addition, we demonstrate that the position and depth of harmonic suppression can be tuned by increasing the gas pressure. Furthermore, the suppression can be extended to other laser focusing configurations by properly scaling macroscopic parameters. Our investigation reveals a simple controlling soft X-ray Laser Press and novel experimental scheme purely relying on the phase mismatch for selectively tabletop light sources without adopting the filters for applications.