{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/baloo-a-large-scale-hybrid-soft-robotic-torso","title":"Baloo: A Large-Scale Hybrid Soft Robotic Torso for Whole-Arm Manipulation","arxiv_id":"2409.08420","date":"2024-09-12","proceeding":null,"authors":["Curtis C. Johnson","Andrew Clawson","Marc D. Killpack"],"abstract":"Soft robotic actuators can simplify the design of controllers when operating in contact-rich environments. Importantly, their passive compliance fundamentally alters contact mechanics by smoothing impacts and distributing forces over large areas. By integrating soft actuators, we can perform high-impact, dynamic, and contact-rich tasks that are challenging or impossible for traditional rigid robots. In order to explore the benefits of passive structural compliance and learn to utilize it effectively, we present a prototype robotic torso named Baloo. Baloo's hybrid soft-rigid design incorporates both adaptability from soft components and strength from rigid components with two meter-long, pneumatic robot arms mounted on a rigid torso. The hybrid design is capable of lifting end effector payloads of up to 19 kg, far exceeding many hybrid robot designs. Such payloads are competitive with similar-sized rigid robots, but with a much higher strength-to-weight ratio. Through 30 physical whole-body grasping experiments, we also demonstrate how a simple control strategy can generalize for effective lifting across six challenging objects with diverse shapes, sizes, and weights. A 100% success rate across all objects--achieved with the simple control strategy--underscores the potential of our hybrid soft-rigid robot design for contact-rich, whole-body tasks.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.08420v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.08420v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"baloo-a-large-scale-hybrid-soft-robotic-torso","repo_url":"https://github.com/byu-rad-lab/baloo-data-analysis","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}