Building your own soft robots can be a daunting task for someone just setting out. Even after building the robot you still need to sort out control systems and software to get it working. Our work on open-source tools for soft robotics is paving the way for the easy adoption of soft robotics by those who are unfamiliar with the field. Using the Robotic Operating System (ROS) we have created a soft robotic package that can be easily used and combined with other work. The addition of our open-source hardware creates a full platform for those who want to work with soft robotics without having to reinvent the wheel.
Our package currently contains the designs and software to control a pneumatic soft robot. Building our package around ROS means that it can easily be integrated with other ROS packages such as those for navigation or communication. Our team or members of the soft robotics community can also extend the package to run different sensors and other types of soft robot.
For more information on our work lowering the barriers to entry for soft robotics, you can read the original paper here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2017.00039/full
A zip file providing the source-code is provided here: integrating _soft_robotics_v0.3
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