Eggenberger Award for Jasan Zughaibi
Jasan Marco Zughaibi, Master’s student with ETH Professor Raffaello D’Andrea at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, receives the Hans-Eggenberger-Prize for his Master’s thesis. The annual award is given to outstanding young scientists.
Pneumatically actuated soft robotic systems show promise for a variety of applications. They are characterized by low weight and inherent compliance due to the soft materials deployed, allowing for close human-robot collaboration. In his Master’s thesis “Design, Modeling and Control of a Spherical Soft Robotic Arm for Pick-and-Place Applications”, Jasan Zughaibi designed a soft robotic arm and the control algorithms for fast and reliable object manipulation. The Hans-Eggenberger-Foundation awarded this work with a prize of CHF 5,000.
Zughaibi uses design-optimization techniques and other systematic tools for the mechanical design of the system. He introduces an analytical control allocation strategy that simplifies the modeling and control and enables the simultaneous control of position and stiffness. A robust feedback controller was developed which stabilizes the system for large variations in the payload, allowing to manipulate payloads that are up to three times heavier than the robot arm itself. The control system is augmented with an iterative learning control scheme, enabling trajectory tracking of agile maneuvers.
Zughaibi will continue his research in the field of soft robotics at ETH Zurich, developing intelligent control algorithms for magnetically actuated continuum robots.