Related papers: Dynamically Reconfigurable Discrete Distributed St…
Compliance is a strong requirement for human-robot interactions. Soft-robots provide an opportunity to cover the lack of compliance in conventional actuation mechanisms, however, the control of them is very challenging given their intrinsic…
In-situ aeroengine maintenance works are highly beneficial as it can significantly reduce the current maintenance cycle which is extensive and costly due to the disassembly requirement of engines from aircrafts. However, navigating in/out…
We hypothesize that a key bottleneck in generalizable robot manipulation is not solely data scale or policy capacity, but a structural mismatch between current visual backbones and the physical requirements of closed-loop control. While…
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
Robotic legs have bimodal operations: swing phases when the leg needs to move quickly in the air (high-speed, low-force) and stance phases when the leg bears the weight of the system (low-speed, high-force). Sizing a traditional…
Magnetic soft continuum robots are capable of bending with remote control in confined space environments, and they have been applied in various bioengineering contexts. As one type of ferromagnetic soft continuums, the Magnetically Induced…
Robust and energy-efficient bipedal locomotion in robotics is still a challenging topic. In order to address issues in this field, we can take inspiration from nature, by studying human locomotion. The Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP)…
Many marine creatures, gastropods, and earthworms generate continuous traveling waves in their bodies for locomotion within marine environments, complex surfaces, and inside narrow gaps. In this work, we study theoretically and…
Active systems of self-propelled agents, e.g., birds, fish, and bacteria, can organize their collective motion into myriad autonomous behaviors. Ubiquitous in nature and across length scales, such phenomena are also amenable to artificial…
Pneumatically operated soft growing robots that extend via tip eversion are well-suited for navigation in confined spaces. Adding the ability to interact with the environment using sensors and tools attached to the robot tip would greatly…
This paper presents an approach to externally influencing a team of robots by means of time-varying density functions. These density functions represent rough references for where the robots should be located. To this end, a continuous-time…
Antagonistic artificial muscles can decouple joint torque and stiffness, but contact transients often degrade this independence. We present a unified real-time framework applicable across pneumatic, electrohydraulic, and dielectric…
A spherical robot has many practical advantages as the entire electronics are protected within a hull and can be carried easily by any Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). However, its use is limited due to finding mounts for sensors. Pendulum…
Stability and reliable operation under a spectrum of environmental conditions is still an open challenge for soft and continuum style manipulators. The inability to carry sufficient load and effectively reject external disturbances are two…
With a slender redundant body, the tendon-driven robot (TDR) has a large workspace and great maneuverability while working in complex environments. TDR comprises multiple independently controlled robot segments, each with a set of driving…
Autonomous wire harness assembly requires robots to manipulate complex branched cables with high precision and reliability. A key challenge in automating this process is predicting how these flexible and branched structures behave under…
In intelligent manufacturing, robots are asked to dynamically adapt their behaviours without reducing productivity. Human teaching, where an operator physically interacts with the robot to demonstrate a new task, is a promising strategy to…
Having the advantage of being relatively fast and powerful, as well as readily fabricated, spherical bubble-propelled microrobots are particularly well suited for applications such as cargo delivery, micromanipulation, and biological or…
This paper introduces a novel variable stiffness mechanism termed Helically Wound Structured Electrostatic Layer Jamming (HWS-ELJ) and systematically investigates its potential applications in variable stiffness robotic finger design. The…
Reconfigurable robots are at the forefront of robotics innovation due to their unmatched versatility and adaptability in addressing various tasks through collaborative operations. This paper explores the design and implementation of a novel…