Do Rigid-Body Simulators Dream of Soft Robots? Learning Contact-Rich Manipulation for Tendon-Driven Continuum Robots (opens in new tab)

Learning contact-rich, whole-body manipulation for soft continuum robots is held back by the lack of simulation infrastructure that has accelerated rigid-robot manipulation. Existing soft robot simulators are physically grounded but lack the contact handling, actuation support, or learning integration needed for contact-rich manipulation; rigid-body approximations offer these capabilities but sacrifice physical grounding. We bridge this gap for ...