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Record W4413786671 · doi:10.1177/02783649251364287

Configuration identification of on-demand variable stiffness strain-limiting layers in zig-zag soft pneumatic actuators using deep learning methods

2025· article· en· W4413786671 on OpenAlexafffund
P. D. S. H. Gunawardane, Phoebe Cheung, Hao Zhou, Gürsel Alıcı, Mu Chiao

Bibliographic record

VenueThe International Journal of Robotics Research · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEngineering
TopicSoft Robotics and Applications
Canadian institutionsUniversity of British Columbia
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaFaculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia
KeywordsStiffnessActuatorSoft roboticsLimitingVariable (mathematics)Identification (biology)Strain (injury)Control theory (sociology)ZigzagControl engineeringArtificial intelligenceComputer scienceEngineeringStructural engineeringMechanical engineeringMaterials scienceMathematicsMathematical analysisGeometryControl (management)

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs) typically offer a fixed trajectory, resulting in one specific tip motion for a given range of pressure. When multiple trajectories are needed, these actuators require re-fabrication with altered structural designs, with different lengths, chamber sizes, and wall thicknesses etc. Passive modular variable stiffness SPAs present a significant advantage by enabling the realization of many distinct trajectories without structural redesign. Although various mathematical modeling techniques are widely used to predict their tip motion by treating it a kinematics problem, solving the inverse problem in the presence of modular strain-limiting layer (SLL) configurations is challenging. It is essential to determine the configuration of such a slender actuator in the form of a robot manipulator to deploy it for a specific function and application without re-fabricating them, by simply varying the SLL per the configuration required for a particular tip-point trajectory. To this aim, this paper introduces a hybrid methodology (based on feed-forward neural network) and a convolutional neural network-based method to predict the required SLL configuration for a particular tip trajectory of the SPA. This methodology is generic enough to apply to such actuators to predict their configuration as per their specific tip point trajectory in Cartesian space. The results presented for a slender SPA have demonstrated that the proposed method has predicted its configurations for a range of applications typified by an endoscope prototype, a soft robotic gripping application, and a system mimicking human finger movement with an average error of 1.65%. This study offers a versatile methodology for "function and application specific" SPAs or robot manipulators without re-fabricating them, by strategically combining SLL and machine learning-based prediction to generate a specific trajectory.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.004
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: Simulation or modeling
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.857
Threshold uncertainty score0.331

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0040.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0010.000
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.065
GPT teacher head0.414
Teacher spread0.349 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSimulation or modeling
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations3
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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