• bipartite consensus
• consensus
• distributed model based control
• formation control
• modular continuum soft arm
• PCC model

Soft robotics' main paradigm aims to enhance the safety of robots' physical interactions with the environment through the design of more compliant robots.
However, despite the rapid growth and increasing fascination in this field, it still poses critical challenges, particularly in terms of modelling and control.
Soft robots are designed with soft and smart materials, but this is not sufficient to reap the benefits of bio-inspired designs in robots in terms of adaptation and interaction ability. We also need to develop new control approaches that are not separated by the robot body. Hence, we are transitioning away from centralised control.
This thesis addresses this challenge by proposing a novel control strategy for modular continuum soft arms to perform tip position regulation with shape constraints.
Drawing from distributed control theory, it presents the Consensus, the Bipartite Consensus, and the Formation Control strategies.
The first strategy enables the execution of tip position regulation tasks and facilitates a comparison between the results obtained by applying two models: a three-dimensional Piece-wise Constant Curvature model with Augmented Formulation and Exponential Notation.
Additionally, the other two strategies contribute to achieving the primary objective of the thesis by enabling the execution of the requested shapes.
The designed control laws are tested during an extensive validation stage in a simulation environment, followed by experimental validation with the I-Support robot with three modules.