Papers › Elastica: A compliant mechanics environment for soft robotic control

Elastica: A compliant mechanics environment for soft robotic control

17 Sep 2020arXiv:2009.08422links table onlyarchive 2025-07-28

Noel Naughton, Jiarui Sun, Arman Tekinalp, Girish Chowdhary, Mattia Gazzola

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Soft robots are notoriously hard to control. This is partly due to the scarcity of models able to capture their complex continuum mechanics, resulting in a lack of control methodologies that take full advantage of body compliance. Currently available simulation methods are either too computational demanding or overly simplistic in their physical assumptions, leading to a paucity of available simulation resources for developing such control schemes. To address this, we introduce Elastica, a free, open-source simulation environment for soft, slender rods that can bend, twist, shear and stretch. We demonstrate how Elastica can be coupled with five state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms to successfully control a soft, compliant robotic arm and complete increasingly challenging tasks.

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