Soft manipulators have been a rising focus of soft robotics research. Taking advantage of
soft materials and flexible, continuous movements, they have promising applicable prospect.
However, their highly internal nonlinearity and unpredictable deformation caused by
environmental effects make it difficult to build an exact model for control. In this work, we
propose a generalized controller for soft manipulators using an estimated Jacobian-based
model derived from structural analysis. The model can be simplified from reasonable …

In this paper we propose a novel closed-loop model-less feedback control scheme for soft
manipulators with Jacobian matrix adaptation. As the major merit, this approach does not
rely on a specific kinematic model and thus has wide applicability and portability for different
kinds of soft manipulators. We make use of closed-loop control, convex optimization and
adaptation strategy to estimate the Jacobian matrix for trajectory tracking tasks. In the
simulation validation, we adapt the algorithm to a two-section soft manipulator of piece-wise …