Section: Overall Objectives

Overall Objectives

The DEFROST team aims to address the open problem of control and modelling methods for deformable robots by answering the following challenges:

• Providing numerical methods and software support to reach the real-time constraint needed by robotic systems: the numerical solutions for the differential equations governing the deformation generate tens of thousands degrees of freedom, which is three orders of magnitude of what is frequently considered in classical methods of robotic modelling and control.

• Integrating deformation models in the control methods of soft robot: In soft-robotics, sensing, actuation and motion are coupled by the deformations. Deformable models must be placed at the heart of the control algorithm design.

• Investigating predictable interaction models with soft-tissues and parameter estimation by visual feedback from medical imaging: On the contrary to many cases in surgical robotics, the contact of the soft robot with the anatomy is permitted and it creates additional deformations on the robot.