Related papers: Adaptive and Resilient Soft Tensegrity Robots

Tensegrity structures are lightweight, can undergo large deformations, and have outstanding robustness capabilities. These unique properties inspired roboticists to investigate their use. However, the morphological design, control,…

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…

Traditional robots have rigid links and structures that limit their ability to interact with the dynamics of their immediate environment. For example, conventional robot manipulators with rigid links can only manipulate objects using…

Animals can finely modulate their leg stiffness to interact with complex terrains and absorb sudden shocks. In feats like leaping and sprinting, animals demonstrate a sophisticated interplay of opposing muscle pairs that actively modulate…

Biomimicry has played a pivotal role in robotics. In contrast to rigid robots, bio-inspired robots exhibit an inherent compliance, facilitating versatile movements and operations in constrained spaces. The robot implementation in…

Future robots will navigate perilous, remote environments with resilience and autonomy. Researchers have proposed building robots with compliant bodies to enhance robustness, but this approach often sacrifices the autonomous capabilities…

Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…

Soft robots, compared to rigid robots, possess inherent advantages, including higher degrees of freedom, compliance, and enhanced safety, which have contributed to their increasing application across various fields. Among these benefits,…

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…

Natural systems integrate the work of many sub-units (cells) toward a large-scale unified goal (morphological and behavioral), which can counteract the effects of unexpected experiences, damage, or simply changes in tasks demands. In this…

Rigid-bodied robots often lack compliance needed to adapt to unstructured environments, while fully soft robots, though highly adaptable, struggle with scalability and load capacity. In nature, musculoskeletal systems balance strength and…

Tensegrity robots, composed of rigid struts and elastic tendons, provide impact resistance, low mass, and adaptability to unstructured terrain. Their compliance and complex, coupled dynamics, however, present modeling and control…

Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…

The dynamical properties of tensegrity robots give them appealing ruggedness and adaptability, but present major challenges with respect to locomotion control. Due to high-dimensionality and complex contact responses, data-driven approaches…

Soft robotics aims to develop robots able to adapt their behavior across a wide range of unstructured and unknown environments. A critical challenge of soft robotic control is that nonlinear dynamics often result in complex behaviors hard…

Continuum soft robots are mechanical systems entirely made of continuously deformable elements. This design solution aims to bring robots closer to invertebrate animals and soft appendices of vertebrate animals (e.g., an elephant's trunk, a…

Advanced machine learning algorithms require platforms that are extremely robust and equipped with rich sensory feedback to handle extensive trial-and-error learning without relying on strong inductive biases. Traditional robotic designs,…

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…

Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…

Designing soft robots poses considerable challenges: automated design approaches may be particularly appealing in this field, as they promise to optimize complex multi-material machines with very little or no human intervention.…