Decentralized estimation and control of a soft robotic arm

This chapter uses PDE models to design decentralized estimation and control laws for a segmented octopus arm. The dynamics of the soft robot arm are formulated as a nonlinear PDE, which is then linearized about setpoints to obtain a linear PDE representation similar to the linear Euler-Bernoulli beam equations. We use this linearized PDE model to design infinite-dimensional control and estimation laws. The optimal controllers and observers are then discretized during the implementation phase to perform operations such as shape tracking. We show that the discretized observer or controller can be implemented in a manner that allows decentralized operation in the robot arm.