Increasing Sensing Spatial Resolution in Soft Robots with Stretchable Optical Networks

A network of stretchable optical waveguides is created and tested under locally applied lateral force and stretching. The network is comprised of urethane waveguides formed into interconnected junctions. These junctions split light pulses sent from a time-of-flight sensor, causing them to travel down different paths throughout the network and are input agnostic. The different split pulses' arrival times and amplitudes can be used to detect these deformations, differentiate between types of deformations and locate which junctions they occurred between.