A Soft e-Textile Sensor for Enhanced Deep Learning-based Shape Sensing of Soft Continuum Robots

Abstract

The safety and accuracy of robotic navigation hold paramount importance, especially in the realm of soft continuum robotics, where the limitations of traditional rigid sensors become evident. Encoders, piezoresistive, and potentiometer sensors often fail to integrate well with the flexible nature of these robots, adding unwanted bulk and rigidity. To overcome these hurdles, our study presents a new approach to shape sensing in soft continuum robots through the use of soft e-textile resistive sensors. This sensor, designed to flawlessly integrate with the robot’s structure, utilizes a resistive material that adjusts its resistance in response to the robot’s movements and deformations. This adjustment facilitates the capture of multidimensional force measurements across the soft sensor layers. A deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is employed to decode the sensor signals, enabling precise estimation of the robot’s shape configuration based on the detailed data from the e-textile sensor. Our research investigates the efficacy of this e-textile sensor in determining the curvature parameters of soft continuum robots. The findings are encouraging, showing that the soft e-textile sensor not only matches but potentially exceeds the capabilities of traditional rigid sensors in terms of shape sensing and estimation. This advancement significantly boosts the safety and efficiency of robotic navigation systems.