Interactive Fluidic State Machines for Soft Robotics

Actuation, energy storage, sensing, and logic are four functionalities of both natural and artificial organisms, giving them the ability to thrive in their environment. The blueprint of conventional robots localizes these functionalities in discrete components supported by rigid materials. However, in soft robots that consist of compliant materials, localization of functionality severely limits autonomous operation and intelligent behaviour. This limitation is the result of the functional architecture, not of the used materials. Alternatively and as demonstrated in nature by the common octopus, the distribution of these four functionalities throughout the body allows to overcome these limitations. This concept of ‘functional embodiment’ is currently non-existing in soft robotics. ILUMIS will create soft robots with embodied functionality by transitioning from a conventional robotic architecture to a fluidic network architecture. Further, by incorporating nonlinearities in all the network elements, the global system acts as a state machine, meaning that the output not only depends on the input, but also on its internal state. How to navigate this state space will be encoded within the nonlinearities, creating embodied logic. Energy and actuation are embodied and intricately linked to the elastic deformations of the components in the network, powering the actions of the soft robot. By creating network components that are sensitive to triggers from the environment, embodied sensing emerges, leading to truly interactive fluidic state machines. ILUMIS will overcome the main challenges of inverse design, where a desired behaviour requires the optimization of a network of nonlinear structures. Thereby ILUMIS will create a new blueprint for soft robotic design with embodied functionality that closes the gap with nature’s soft organisms. This knowledge will impact applications ranging from surgical micro-robots and exploration robots to haptic interfaces for virtual reality.