  Soft robotics hold promise in the development of safe yet powered assistive
wearable devices for infants. Key to this is the development of closed-loop
controllers that can help regulate pneumatic pressure in the device's actuators
in an effort to induce controlled motion at the user's limbs and be able to
track different types of trajectories. This work develops a controller for soft
pneumatic actuators aimed to power a pediatric soft wearable robotic device
prototype for upper extremity motion assistance. The controller tracks desired
trajectories for a system of soft pneumatic actuators supporting
two-degree-of-freedom shoulder joint motion on an infant-sized engineered
mannequin. The degrees of freedom assisted by the actuators are equivalent to
shoulder motion (abduction/adduction and flexion/extension). Embedded inertial
measurement unit sensors provide real-time joint feedback. Experimental data
from performing reaching tasks using the engineered mannequin are obtained and
compared against ground truth to evaluate the performance of the developed
controller. Results reveal the proposed controller leads to accurate trajectory
tracking performance across a variety of shoulder joint motions.
