Related papers: A Reconfigurable Hybrid Actuator with Rigid and So…
Soft actuators have drawn significant attention from researchers with an inherently compliant design to address the safety issues in physical human-robot interactions. However, they are also vulnerable and pose new challenges in the design,…
Soft robots have the potential to revolutionize the use of robotic systems with their capability of establishing safe, robust, and adaptable interactions with their environment, but their precise control remains challenging. In contrast,…
Soft robots are known for their ability to perform tasks with great adaptability, enabled by their distributed, non-uniform stiffness and actuation. Bending is the most fundamental motion for soft robot design, but creating robust, and…
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…
Soft grippers are receiving growing attention due to their compliance-based interactive safety and dexterity. Hybrid gripper (soft actuators enhanced by rigid constraints) is a new trend in soft gripper design. With right structural…
Magnetic-responsive composites that consist of soft matrix embedded with hard-magnetic particles have recently been demonstrated as robust soft active materials for fast-transforming actuation. However, the deformation of the functional…
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…
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…
Soft robots have been leveraged in considerable areas like surgery, rehabilitation, and bionics due to their softness, flexibility, and safety. However, it is challenging to produce two same soft robots even with the same mold and…
We describe a fluidic actuator design that replaces the sealed chamber of a hydraulic cylinder using a soft actuator to provide compliant linear compression with a large force ($\geq$100 N) at a low operation pressure ($\leq$50 kPa) for a…
While its biological significance is well-documented, its application in soft robotics, particularly for the transport of fragile and irregularly shaped objects, remains underexplored. This study presents a modular soft robotic actuator…
Soft robots are inherently compliant and have a strong potential to realize human-friendly and safe robots. Despite continued research highlighting the potential of soft robots, they remain largely confined to laboratory settings. In this…
In this paper, we propose a novel design of a hybrid mobile robot with controllable stiffness and deformable shape. Compared to conventional mobile agents, our system can switch between rigid and compliant phases by solidifying or melting…
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…
There is a growing need for robots that can change their shape, size and mechanical properties to adapt to evolving tasks and environments. However, current shape-changing systems generally utilize bespoke, system-specific mechanisms that…
This paper presents preliminary results of the design, development, and evaluation of a hand rehabilitation glove fabricated using lobster-inspired hybrid design with rigid and soft components for actuation. Inspired by the bending abdomen…
Bio-inspired soft robots have already shown the ability to handle uncertainty and adapt to unstructured environments. However, their availability is partially restricted by time-consuming, costly and highly supervised design-fabrication…
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,…
Soft robots are intrinsically capable of adapting to different environments by changing their shape in response to interaction forces with the environment. However, sensing and feedback are still required for higher level decisions and…
As soft robot design matures, researchers have converged to sophisticated design paradigms to enable the development of more suitable platforms. Two such paradigms are soft-rigid hybrid robots, which utilize rigid structural materials in…