An Open MuJoCo Simulation Framework for a Quadrotor Carrying a Tendon-Driven Soft Continuum Arm

Engineering notes

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Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充：本站会优先为 VLA、具身智能、人形机器人控制、机器人操作等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

Combining aerial robots with soft continuum manipulators promises safe, compliant interaction with the environment, but the coupled dynamics of a free-flying base and a highly deformable, underactuated arm are difficult to study without a suitable simulator. This paper describes an open-source simulation framework, built on the MuJoCo physics engine, for a quadrotor that carries a tendon-driven soft continuum arm underneath its body. The arm is modelled as a pseudo-rigid-body chain of twelve segments joined by pairs of orthogonal compliant hinges. Three tendons, spaced \SI{120}{\degree} apart and routed through every segment, bend it in any direction. A geometric tracking controller on $SE(3)$ flies the vehicle; its rotor allocation matrix is generated directly from the model description. A closed-form tendon-tension allocation keeps every tension within its limits and gives the same bending moment in every direction. We report the full set of modelling choices and parameters, and we evaluate the framework in four simulated scenarios: a \SI{36}{\second} mission with a figure-eight and a tendon-driven tip sweep, an attitude-gain study, a quasi-static characterization of the bending workspace, and an impulsive disturbance applied to the arm tip. With the nominal gains the vehicle tracks the mission with \SI{3.1}{\centi\meter} RMS position error while the arm tip swings up to \SI{37}{\centi\meter} from the body axis. The gain study shows that a low-bandwidth attitude loop lets the arm excite sustained oscillations. The simulation runs about $15\times$ faster than real time on a laptop CPU. All models, controllers and scripts that reproduce the figures are released.

Links and sources

• Official / arXiv page
• PDF from original source

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