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Ensuring safety is of paramount importance in physical human-robot interaction applications. This requires both adherence to safety constraints defined on the system state, as well as guaranteeing compliant behavior of the robot. If the…
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…
The mechanical complexity of soft robots creates significant challenges for their model-based control. Specifically, linear data-driven models have struggled to control soft robots on complex, spatially extended paths that explore regions…
The robotics community has seen an exponential growth in the level of complexity of the theoretical tools presented for the modeling of soft robotics devices. Different solutions have been presented to overcome the difficulties related to…
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the importance of digital fabrication to enable online learning, which remains a challenge for robotics courses. We introduce a teaching methodology that allows students to participate remotely in a…
Soft heat engines are poised to play a vital role in future soft robots due to their easy integration into soft structures and low-voltage power requirements. Recent works have demonstrated soft heat engines relying on liquid-to-gas phase…
The demining of landmines using drones is challenging; air-releasable payloads are typically non-intelligent (e.g., water balloons or explosives) and deploying them at even low altitudes (~6 meter) is inherently inaccurate due to complex…
Exploring bodies of water on their surface allows robots to efficiently communicate and harvest energy from the sun. On the water surface, however, robots often face highly unstructured environments, cluttered with plant matter, animals,…
Robot deployment in realistic dynamic environments is a challenging problem despite the fact that robots can be quite skilled at a large number of isolated tasks. One reason for this is that robots are rarely equipped with powerful…
Due to their ability to move without sliding relative to their environment, soft growing robots are attractive for deploying distributed sensor networks in confined spaces. Sensing of the state of such robots would also add to their…
The Finite Element Method (FEM) is a powerful modeling tool for predicting soft robots' behavior, but its computation time can limit practical applications. In this paper, a learning-based approach based on condensation of the FEM model is…
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…
Soft robotics focuses on designing robots with highly deformable materials, allowing them to adapt and operate safely and reliably in unstructured and variable environments. While soft robots offer increased compliance over rigid body…
Handed Shearing Auxetics (HSA) are a promising structure for making electrically driven robots with distributed compliance that convert a motors rotation and torque into extension and force. We overcame past limitations on the range of…
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…
We present the modeling, design, fabrication and feedback control of an earthworm-inspired soft robot capable of crawling on surfaces by actively manipulating the frictional force between its body and the surface. Earthworms are segmented…
Soft robots, inspired by elephant trunks or octopus arms, offer extraordinary flexibility to bend, twist, and elongate in ways that rigid robots cannot. However, their motion planning remains a challenge, especially in cluttered…
Soft robotics is an emerging technology in which engineers create flexible devices for use in a variety of applications. In order to advance the wide adoption of soft robots, ensuring their trustworthiness is essential; if soft robots are…
Soft robots have gained significant attention due to their flexibility and safety, particularly in human-centric applications. The co-design of structure and controller in soft robotics has presented a longstanding challenge owing to the…
This work presents a method of incorporating low-cost capacitive tactile sensors on a soft socially assistive robot platform. By embedding conductive thread into the robot's crocheted exterior, we formed a set of low-cost, flexible…