Leveraging Passive Compliance of Soft Robotics for Physical Human-Robot Collaborative Manipulation

This work represents an initial benchmark of a large-scale soft robot performing physical, collaborative manipulation of a long, extended object with a human partner. The robot consists of a pneumatically-actuated, three-link continuum soft manipulator mounted to an omni-directional mobile base. The system level configuration of the robot and design of the collaborative manipulation (co-manipulation) study are presented. The initial results, both quantitative and qualitative, are directly compared to previous similar human-human co-manipulation studies. These initial results show promise in the ability for large-scale soft robots to perform comparably to human partners acting as non-visual followers in a co-manipulation task. Furthermore, these results challenge traditional soft robot strength limitations and indicate potential for applications requiring strength and adaptability.

@article{cordon2025_2504.08184,
  title={ Leveraging Passive Compliance of Soft Robotics for Physical Human-Robot Collaborative Manipulation },
  author={ Dallin L. Cordon and Shaden Moss and Marc Killpack and John L. Salmon },
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.08184},
  year={ 2025 }
}