Soft Material Modeling for Robotic Manipulation

This article presents a new approach of soft material modeling for robotic manipulation which combines physical modeling and tracking of a deformable object. We discuss the construction of geometrical models using MRI system and how to overcome the problem of variability. The physical model focuses on meat/muscles deformation. We introduce the principal criteria for choosing most appropriate models and discuss two modeling methods which suit our problem: mass spring model and tensor mass model. The introduction of anisotropy in these models allows results to be more realistic but evolves an increasing of computing time.