Related papers: Robophysical study of jumping dynamics on granular…
It has been found that certain biological organisms, such as Erodium seeds and Scincus scincus, are capable of effectively and efficiently burying themselves in soil. Biological Organisms employ various locomotion modes, including coiling…
The penetration of projectiles into granular materials has been mainly studied using spherical intruders. Here we explore the dynamics of rods penetrating vertically in a two-dimensional granular bed composed of expanded polystyrene…
Granular intrusion is commonly observed in natural and human-made settings. Unlike typical solids and fluids, granular media can simultaneously display fluid-like and solid-like characteristics in a variety of intrusion scenarios. This…
We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…
Legged robots have the potential to leverage obstacles to climb steep sand slopes. However, efficiently repositioning these obstacles to desired locations is challenging. Here we present DiffusiveGRAIN, a learning-based method that enables…
Granular jamming is a popular soft robotics technology that has seen recent widespread applications including industrial gripping, surgical robotics and haptics. However, to date the field has not fully exploited the fundamental science of…
We present a deep-learning based tracking objects of interest in walking droplet and granular intruder experiments. In a typical walking droplet experiment, a liquid droplet, known as \textit{walker}, propels itself laterally on the free…
Like in liquids, objects moving in granular materials experience a drag force. We investigate here whether and how the object acceleration affect this drag force. The study is based on simulations of a canonical drag test, which involves…
Living organisms intertwine soft (e.g., muscle) and hard (e.g., bones) materials, giving them an intrinsic flexibility and resiliency often lacking in conventional rigid robots. The emerging field of soft robotics seeks to harness these…
For mobile robots, navigating cluttered or dynamic environments often necessitates non-prehensile manipulation, particularly when faced with objects that are too large, irregular, or fragile to grasp. The unpredictable behavior and varying…
The mechanical response of a wet granular layer to imposed shear is studied experimentally at low applied normal stress. The granular material is immersed in water and the shear is applied by sliding a plate resting on the upper surface of…
We investigate the dynamics of an intruder pulled by a constant force in a dense two-dimensional granular fluid by means of event-driven molecular dynamics simulations. In a first step, we show how a propagating momentum front develops and…
Pressurized fluid injection into underground rocks occurs in applications like carbon sequestration, hydraulic fracturing, and wastewater disposal, and may lead to human-induced earthquakes and surface uplift. The fluid injection raises the…
We investigate the motion of groups of intruders in a two-dimensional granular system by using discrete numerical simulations. By imposing either a constant velocity or a thrusting force on larger disks (intruders) that move within smaller…
Deformable object manipulation presents a unique set of challenges in robotic manipulation by exhibiting high degrees of freedom and severe self-occlusion. State representation for materials that exhibit plastic behavior, like modeling clay…
Autonomy for robots interacting with sand will enable a wide range of beneficial behaviors, from earth moving for construction and farming vehicles to navigating rough terrain for Mars rovers. The goal of this work is to shape sand into…
Locomotion is typically studied either in continuous media where bodies and legs experience forces generated by the flowing medium, or on solid substrates dominated by friction. In the former, centralized coordination is believed to…
Granular jamming has recently become popular in soft robotics with widespread applications including industrial gripping, surgical robotics and haptics. Previous work has investigated the use of various techniques that exploit the nature of…
We study the dynamics of an intruder moving through a fluidized granular medium in three dimensions ($d=3$). The intruder and grains have both translational and rotational degrees of freedom. The energy-dissipation mechanism is solid…
Tool-based scooping is vital in robot-assisted tasks, enabling interaction with objects of varying sizes, shapes, and material states. Recent studies have shown that flexible, reconfigurable soft robotic end-effectors can adapt their shape…