A Soft Body Actuator Position Measurement Method Based on OpenCV Library

The inherent deformability of soft body robots renders the conventional rigid measurement techniques inapplicable to the assessment of their structural integrity. Consequently, the investigation of appropriate measurement methodologies for soft body structures has emerged as a prominent area of research. This paper proposes a visual processing algorithm based on the OpenCV library for the measurement of the position of soft robots. By affixing a defined number of marker points to the soft body robot, the bending contour can be extracted with precision and efficiency through the recognition of the marker points and the subsequent extraction of the overall contour. This method requires a minimal number of marker points and the algorithm is highly efficient. The location of the marker points is not a strict requirement, and the method is highly practical as it can be applied to the position measurement of a wide range of soft-body robots with varying structures. This research provides a valuable reference for the field of soft-body measurement.