BiPneu: Design and Control of a Bipolar-Pressure Pneumatic System for Soft Robots

Positive–negative pressure regulation is critical to soft robotic actuators, enabling large motion ranges and versatile actuation modes. However, achieving high-performance regulation across both pressure polarities remains challenging due to asymmetric inflation–deflation dynamics, valve nonlinearities, and switching-induced flow disturbances. This article presentsBiPneu, a scalable and cost-efficient multichannel bipolar-pressure pneumatic system for soft robots that enables wide-range, accurate, and responsive pressure regulation while providing seamless compatibility with high-level software ecosystems. A dual-mode sliding-mode controller (DM-SMC) with hysteresis-supervised mode selection is proposed based on a hybrid electropneumatic model. Extensive simulation and experiments demonstrate the superior performance of DM-SMC in tracking step and sinusoidal pressure references compared with both advanced model predictive controllers and well-tuned PID controllers. Experimental results show average absolute errors of 1.44 kPa in multistep tests and 4.23 kPa in sinusoidal tracking, corresponding to reductions of 11.9% and 35.6% relative to PID control, along with improved control effort, valve switching rate, and transient response. Robustness of DM-SMC is further verified on a bellow actuator with pressure-dependent volume. Finally, BiPneu's capability is demonstrated via two soft robotic examples, quick ball-maneuvering with a soft parallel manipulator and real-time finite element method-based teleoperation of a soft bellows actuator.