软体机器人转弯：软腿的机器人使用气动电路来像乌龟一样走路

软体机器人转弯：软腿的机器人使用气动电路来像乌龟一样走路Generally when people talk about soft robots the robots are only mostly soft. There are some components that are very difficult to make soft including pressure sources and the necessary electronics to direct that pressure between different soft actuators in a way that can be used for propulsion. What’s really cool about this robot is that researchers have managed to take a pressure source (eith

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Soft robots are inherently safe highly resilient and potentially very cheap making them promising for a wide array of applications. But development on them has been a bit slow relative to other areas of robotics at least partially because soft robots can’t directly benefit from the massive increase in computing power and sensor and actuator availability that we’ve seen over the last few decades. Instead roboticists have had to get creative to find ways of achieving the functionality of conventional robotics components using soft materials and compatible power sources.

软机器人具有天生的安全性、高弹性和潜在的廉价性，使其具有广泛的应用前景。但与机器人学的其他领域相比，软机器人的发展有点缓慢，至少部分原因是软机器人无法直接受益于我们在过去几十年中看到的计算能力、传感器和执行器可用性的大幅提高。取而代之的是，机器人学家必须发挥创造力，找到利用软材料和兼容电源实现传统机器人部件功能的方法。

In the current issue of Science Robotics researchers from UC San Diego demonstrate a soft walking robot with four legs that moves with a turtle-like gait controlled by a pneumatic circuit system made from tubes and valves. This air-powered nervous system can actuate multiple degrees of freedom in sequence from a single source of pressurized air offering a huge reduction in complexity and bringing a very basic form of decision making onto the robot itself.

在最新一期的《科学机器人》杂志上，加州大学圣地亚哥分校的研究人员展示了一种软步行机器人，它有四条腿，由管子和阀门组成的气动回路系统控制，以乌龟般的步态移动。这种空气驱动的神经系统可以从一个单一的压缩空气源依次驱动多个自由度，大大降低了复杂性，并为机器人本身带来了一种非常基本的决策形式。

Generally when people talk about soft robots the robots are only mostly soft. There are some components that are very difficult to make soft including pressure sources and the necessary electronics to direct that pressure between different soft actuators in a way that can be used for propulsion. What’s really cool about this robot is that researchers have managed to take a pressure source (either a single tether or an onboard CO2 cartridge) and direct it to four different legs each with three different air chambers using an oscillating three valve circuit made entirely of soft materials.

一般来说，当人们谈论软机器人时，机器人大多是软的。有一些部件很难使其变软，包括压力源和必要的电子设备，以便以可用于推进的方式在不同的软致动器之间引导压力。这个机器人真正酷的地方在于，研究人员利用一个完全由软材料制成的振荡三阀电路，成功地将一个压力源（一根绳子或一个机载二氧化碳筒）引导到四个不同的腿上，每个腿上有三个不同的气室。

The inspiration for this can be found in biology—natural organisms including quadrupeds use nervous system components called central pattern generators (CPGs) to prompt repetitive motions with limbs that are used for walking flying and swimming. This is obviously more complicated in some organisms than in others and is typically mediated by sensory feedback but the underlying structure of a CPG is basically just a repeating circuit that drives muscles in sequence to produce a stable continuous gait. In this case we’ve got pneumatic muscles being driven in opposing pairs resulting in a diagonal couplet gait where diagonally opposed limbs rotate forwards and backwards at the same time.

这一点的灵感可以在生物学中找到，包括四足动物在内的自然生物，利用被称为中枢模式发生器（cpg）的神经系统组件来促进用于行走、飞行和游泳的四肢的重复运动。这在某些有机体中显然比在其他有机体中更为复杂，并且通常由感觉反馈介导，但是CPG的基本结构基本上只是一个重复回路，它按顺序驱动肌肉产生稳定、连续的步态。在这种情况下，我们有气动肌肉被驱动成相反的一对，从而形成一种对角耦合步态，对角相对的肢体同时向前和向后旋转。

The circuit itself is made up of three bistable pneumatic valves connected by tubing that acts as a delay by providing resistance to the gas moving through it that can be adjusted by altering the tube’s length and inner diameter. Within the circuit the movement of the pressurized gas acts as both a source of energy and as a signal since wherever the pressure is in the circuit is where the legs are moving. The simplest circuit uses only three valves and can keep the robot walking in one single direction but more valves can add more complex leg control options. For example the researchers were able to use seven valves to tune the phase offset of the gait and even just one additional valve (albeit of a slightly more complex design) could enable reversal of the system causing the robot to walk backwards in response to input from a soft sensor. And with another complex valve a manual (tethered) controller could be used for omnidirectional movement.

电路本身由三个双稳态气动阀组成，这些阀通过管道连接，通过向通过它的气体提供阻力来起延迟作用，通过改变管道的长度和内径可以进行调整。在回路中，加压气体的运动既是一种能量来源，也是一种信号，因为回路中的压力在哪里，腿就在哪里运动。最简单的电路仅使用三个阀，并且可以保持机器人朝一个方向行走，但是更多的阀可以添加更复杂的腿部控制选项。例如，研究人员能够使用七个阀门来调整步态的相位偏移，甚至只需要一个额外的阀门（尽管设计稍微复杂一点）就可以实现系统的反转，从而使机器人根据软传感器的输入向后行走。对于另一个复杂的阀门，手动（栓系）控制器可用于全方位运动。

This work has some similarities to the rover that JPL is developing to explore Venus—that rover isn’t a soft robot of course but it operates under similar constraints in that it can’t rely on conventional electronic systems for autonomous navigation or control. It turns out that there are plenty of clever ways to use mechanical (or in this case pneumatic) intelligence to make robots with relatively complex autonomous behaviors meaning that in the future soft (or soft-ish) robots could find valuable roles in situations where using a non-compliant system is not a good option.

这项工作与JPL为探索金星而开发的火星车有一些相似之处，当然，火星车不是一个软机器人，但它在类似的限制条件下工作，因为它不能依赖传统的电子系统进行自主导航或控制。事实证明，有很多聪明的方法可以利用机械（或者在本例中是气动）智能来制造具有相对复杂自主行为的机器人，这意味着在未来，软机器人（或者软机器人）可以在使用不合规系统不是一个好选择的情况下找到有价值的角色。

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编译：J<4

编辑：Zero