Related papers: Design and control of a soft, shape-changing, craw…

Limbless creatures can crawl on flat surfaces by deforming their bodies and interacting with asperities on the ground, offering a biological blueprint for designing efficient limbless robots. Inspired by this natural locomotion, we present…

Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…

Recent research on mobile robots has focused on increasing their adaptability to unpredictable and unstructured environments using soft materials and structures. However, the determination of key design parameters and control over these…

Torque and continuous rotation are fundamental methods of actuation and manipulation in rigid robots. Soft robot arms use soft materials and structures to mimic the passive compliance of biological arms that bend and extend. This use of…

Soft robotics has advanced rapidly, yet its control methods remain fragmented: different morphologies and actuation schemes still require task-specific controllers, hindering theoretical integration and large-scale deployment. A generic…

Soft robots are robotic systems made of deformable materials and exhibit unique flexibility that can be exploited for complex environments and tasks. However, their control problem has been considered a challenging subject because they are…

Almost all robotic systems in use have hard shells, which is limiting in many ways their full potential of physical interaction with humans or their surrounding environment. Robots with soft-shell covers offer an alternative morphology…

Soft robotics technology can aid in achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement through development of autonomous, environmentally responsible machines powered by renewable energy. By…

Robots and artificial machines have been captivating the public for centuries, depicted first as threats to humanity, then as subordinates and helpers. In the last decade, the booming exposure of humans to robots has fostered an increasing…

This work provides a complete framework for the simulation, co-optimization, and sim-to-real transfer of the design and control of soft legged robots. The compliance of soft robots provides a form of "mechanical intelligence" -- the ability…

Mobile soft robots offer compelling applications in fields ranging from urban search and rescue to planetary exploration. A critical challenge of soft robotic control is that the nonlinear dynamics imposed by soft materials often result in…

This paper summarizes the most recent research in soft robotic field from the factors of material, actuation, mechanicsproperty, dimension & scale and architecture, and then presents the relations among the functionalities, manufacturing…

Flexible robots have advantages over rigid robots in their ability to conform physically to their environment and to form a wide variety of shapes. Sensing the force applied by or to flexible robots is useful for both navigation and…

Many industries extensively use flexible materials. Effective approaches for handling flexible objects with a robot manipulator must address residual vibrations. Existing solutions rely on complex models, use additional instrumentation for…

Soft robots achieve functionality through tight coupling among geometry, material composition, and actuation. As a result, effective design optimization requires these three aspects to be considered jointly rather than in isolation. This…

Soft robots promise inherent safety via their material compliance for seamless interactions with humans or delicate environments. Yet, their development is challenging because it requires integrating materials, geometry, actuation, and…

Soft robots have drawn significant attention recently for their ability to achieve rich shapes when interacting with complex environments. However, their elasticity and flexibility compared to rigid robots also pose significant challenges…

Inspired by the vertebrate branch of the animal kingdom, articulated soft robots are robotic systems embedding elastic elements into a classic rigid (skeleton-like) structure. Leveraging on their bodies elasticity, soft robots promise to…

Soft slender robots have attracted more and more research attentions in these years due to their continuity and compliance natures. However, mechanics modeling for soft robots interacting with environment is still an academic challenge…

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…