Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41660579›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in robotics and AI2025

On vibration suppression of a tendon-driven soft robotic neck for the social robot HARU.

Seshagopalan Thorapalli Muralidharan, Randy Gomez, Georgios Andrikopoulos

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Frontiers in robotics and AI, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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0citing papers in PubMed
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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Seshagopalan Thorapalli MuralidharanRobot Design Lab, Mechatronics Unit, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.
Randy GomezHonda Research Institute of Japan Co., Ltd., Wako, Japan.
Georgios AndrikopoulosRobot Design Lab, Mechatronics Unit, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Tendon-driven continuum actuators (TDCAs) provide compliant and lifelike motion that is well suited for human-robot interaction, but their structural compliance and underactuation make them susceptible to undesired vibrations, particularly along unactuated axes under load. This work addresses vibration suppression in such systems by proposing a real-time control strategy for a two-degree-of-freedom TDCA-based soft robotic neck used in the HARU social robot, where yaw motion is unactuated and prone to oscillations due to eccentric loading. The proposed approach combines a current-based tendon pretensioning routine, baseline PID control of the actuated pitch and roll axes, and a novel Coupled Axis Indirect Vibration Suppression (CIVS) mechanism. CIVS exploits mechanical cross-axis coupling by using high-pass filtered yaw acceleration from an inertial sensor to generate transient tension modulations in the actuated tendons, thereby increasing effective damping of the unactuated yaw mode without introducing additional hardware or compromising compliance. A classical sliding mode control is also implemented as a nonlinear benchmark under identical hardware constraints. Experimental validation on the HARU neck under representative loading conditions demonstrates that the proposed method achieves substantial vibration attenuation. Compared to the baseline controller, CIVS reduces yaw angular range by approximately 53% and yaw acceleration area by over 60%, while preserving smooth, expressive motion. The results further show that CIVS outperforms the sliding mode controller in suppressing vibrations on the unactuated axis. These findings indicate that indirect, feedback-driven tendon modulation provides an effective and low-complexity solution for mitigating load-induced vibrations in underactuated soft robotic systems, making the approach particularly suitable for interactive applications where safety, compliance, and motion expressivity are critical.

Indexed as

continuum robotsfeedback controlsocial roboticssoft roboticstendon-driven actuatorsunderactuated systemsvibration suppression

Identifiers

PMID41660579
PMCPMC12872555

What Socratic holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.