By using an electrical circuit of flexible wires to reinforce a soft actuator, the length of the actuator can be measured through the inductance of the circuit.

My “Smart Braid” inductance sensing technique for McKibben muscles was awarded the 2015 Prize for the Contributions in Soft Robotics Research (Soft Robotics Toolkit). See the paper here.

Publications

• Felt, W., 2017,”Sensing Methods for Soft Robotics,”, PhD Thesis, [URL]

• Felt, W., Lu, S., Remy, C.D., 2018, “Modeling and design of “Smart Braid” inductance sensors for fiber-reinforced elastomeric enclosures”, IEEE Sensors Journal, [URL]

• Felt, W., Chin, K.Y., and Remy, C.D., 2017, “Smart Braid feedback for the closed-loop control of soft robotic systems”, Soft Robotics, 4(3):261-273 [URL]

• Felt, W., Chin, K.Y., and Remy, C.D., 2015, “Contraction sensing with Smart Braid McKibben muscles”, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, 21(3):1201-2019 [URL]

• Felt, W. and Remy, C.D., 2014, “Smart Braid: Air muscles that measure force and displacement”, International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Chicago, IL [URL]