Investigating frictional contact behavior for soft material robot simulations

Abstract

The ability to interact safely with the environment is known as one of the major advantages of soft robots (SRs). Due to their low material stiffness, these continuously deformable robots offer inherent flexibility. These advantages make them suitable for application that involve human-robot collaboration in industrial settings as well as medical application such as minimally invasive surgery. To date only few research groups have analyzed the contact and frictional behavior of soft robots. In fact, the contact behavior is often oversimplified or neglected. Motivated by the idea to bridge this gap, this work presents measurements and the resulting coefficient of friction (COF) for silicone rubbers that are widely used in the field of SRs and different contact partners which depend on contact pressure and ambient temperature. From these measurements, a more representative contact model is established and used to more accurately simulate soft material robots’ frictional contact behavior. Moreover the influence of friction and therefore the need to implement frictional behavior is demonstrated for a typical application of a SR.