Gesture-Based Control of Rotary Pneumatic Soft Robot Using Leap Motion Controller

Abstract

The development and testing of a rotary soft actuator for gesture-based control is described in this paper. The rotary soft actuators are fabricated via a moulding process and connected to a rotary joint as an antagonist and agonist pair which gives rise to clockwise and counter-clockwise rotation of the joint. The soft robotic system is controlled using the leap motion controller which is a gesture-based device. Gesture commands executed are circle, swipe, screen tap and key tap gestures to produce clockwise, counter-clockwise, stop and start movements of the rotary actuator.