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Wearable and legged robot designers face multiple challenges when choosing actuation. Traditional fully actuated designs using electric motors are multifunctional but oversized and inefficient for bearing conservative loads and for being…
Contrary to the stunning feats observed in birds of prey, aerial manipulation and grasping with flying robots still lack versatility and agility. Conventional approaches using rigid manipulators require precise positioning and are subject…
Soft modular robots enable more flexibility and safer interaction with the changing environment than traditional robots. However, it has remained challenging to create deformable connectors that can be integrated into soft machines. In this…
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…
Soft robots - due to their intrinsic flexibility of the body - can adaptively navigate unstructured environments. One of the most popular locomotion gaits that has been implemented in soft robots is undulation. The undulation motion in soft…
We present a reinforcement learning framework for quadrupedal wall-climbing locomotion that explicitly addresses uncertainty in magnetic foot adhesion. A physics-based adhesion model of a quadrupedal magnetic climbing robot is incorporated…
In recent years, the development of robots capable of operating in both aerial and aquatic environments has gained significant attention. This study presents the design and fabrication of a novel aerial-aquatic locomotion robot (AALR).…
There are many spaces inaccessible to humans where robots could help deliver sensors and equipment. Many of these spaces contain three-dimensional passageways and uneven terrain that pose challenges for robot design and control. Everting…
Sliding tasks performed by aerial robots are valuable for inspection and simple maintenance tasks at height, such as non-destructive testing and painting. Although various end-effector designs have been used for such tasks, non-actuated…
Aerial robots have garnered significant attention due to their potential applications in various industries, such as inspection, search and rescue, and drone delivery. Successful missions often depend on the ability of these robots to grasp…
Conventional soft pneumatic actuators, typically based on hollow elastomeric chambers, often suffer from small structural support and require costly geometry-specific redesigns for multimodal functionality. Porous materials such as foam,…
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…
Animals can accomplish many incredible behavioral feats across a wide range of operational environments and scales that current robots struggle to match. One explanation for this performance gap is the extraordinary properties of the…
Robot arms that assist humans should be able to pick up, move, and release everyday objects. Today's assistive robot arms use rigid grippers to pinch items between fingers; while these rigid grippers are well suited for large and heavy…
Soft underwater robots typically explore bioinspired designs at the expense of power efficiency when compared to traditional underwater robots, which limits their practical use in real-world applications. We leverage a fluidic closed-loop…
We introduce a new low-power 13-mg microactuator driven by shape-memory alloy (SMA) wires for underwater operation. The development of this device was motivated by the recent creation of microswimmers such as the FRISHBot, WaterStrider,…
Conformable robotic systems are attractive for applications in which they can be used to actuate structures with large surface areas, to provide forces through wearable garments, or to realize autonomous robotic systems. We present a new…
Soft robotics has emerged as a promising technology that holds great potential for various application areas. This is due to soft materials unique properties, including flexibility, safety, and shock absorption, among others. Despite many…
Snapping instabilities in soft structures offer a powerful pathway to achieve rapid and energy-efficient actuation. In this study, an eccentric dome-shaped snapping actuator is developed to generate controllable asymmetric motion through…
This paper presents design, fabrication and control of a compliant 2D manipulator, a so called soft actuator. Our focus is on fiber-reinforced elastomer actuators driven by a constant pressure hydraulic supply and modulated on/off valves.…