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Soft robots can safely interact with environments because of their mechanical compliance. Self-collision is also employed in the modern design of soft robots to enhance their performance during different tasks. However, developing an…
Passive deformation due to compliance is a commonly used benefit of soft robots, providing opportunities to achieve robust actuation with few active degrees of freedom. Soft growing robots in particular have shown promise in navigation of…
Simulating complex molecules and materials is an anticipated application of quantum devices. With strong quantum advantage demonstrated in artificial tasks, we examine how such advantage translates into modeling physical problems of…
Many forms of programmable matter have been proposed for various tasks. We use an abstract model of self-organizing particle systems for programmable matter which could be used for a variety of applications, including smart paint and…
In this work we present a technique to select the best robot for accomplishing a task assuming that the map of the environment is known in advance. To do so, capabilities of the robots are listed and the environments where they can be used…
Flexible object manipulation of paper and cloth is a major research challenge in robot manipulation. Although there have been efforts to develop hardware that enables specific actions and to realize a single action of paper folding using…
Amphibious robots, operating seamlessly across land and water, are advancing applications in conservation, disaster response, and defense. Their performance depends on locomotion mechanisms, actuation technologies, and sensor-control…
Quadruped robots are currently a widespread platform for robotics research, thanks to powerful Reinforcement Learning controllers and the availability of cheap and robust commercial platforms. However, to broaden the adoption of the…
Full dimensional potential energy surfaces (PESs) based on machine learning (ML) techniques provide means for accurate and efficient molecular simulations in the gas- and condensed-phase for various experimental observables ranging from…
Path planning and collision avoidance are challenging in complex and highly variable environments due to the limited horizon of events. In literature, there are multiple model- and learning-based approaches that require significant…
Performing long-term experimentation or large-scale data collection for machine learning in the field of soft robotics is challenging, due to the hardware robustness and experimental flexibility required. In this work, we propose a modular…
Soft robots have the ability to adapt to their environment, which makes them suitable for use in disaster areas and agricultural fields, where their mobility is constrained by complex terrain. One of the main challenges in developing soft…
Recently several hierarchical inverse dynamics controllers based on cascades of quadratic programs have been proposed for application on torque controlled robots. They have important theoretical benefits but have never been implemented on a…
We develop a numerical framework to simulate the locomotion of a flagellated bacterium with a spheroidal head (such as Escherichia coli) in biological fluids like mucus, which are entangled polymer solutions exhibiting elasto-viscoplastic…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
The process of self-morphing in curved surfaces found in nature, such as with the growth of flowers and leaves, has generated interest in the study of self-morphing bilayers, which has been used in many soft robots or switchers. However,…
Microscopic analysis of micro particles in situ in diverse water environments is necessary for monitoring water quality and localizing contamination sources. Conventional sensors such as optical microscopes and fluorometers often require…
Agricultural robotics is an active research area due to global population growth and expectations of food and labor shortages. Robots can potentially help with tasks such as pruning, harvesting, phenotyping, and plant modeling. However,…
Visual robot navigation within large-scale, semi-structured environments deals with various challenges such as computation intensive path planning algorithms or insufficient knowledge about traversable spaces. Moreover, many…
Many applications in robotics require primitive spherical geometry, especially in cases where efficient distance queries are necessary. Manual creation of spherical models is time-consuming and prone to errors. This paper presents Foam, a…