Related papers: A Reconfigurable Hybrid Actuator with Rigid and So…
Real-life control tasks involve matters of various substances---rigid or soft bodies, liquid, gas---each with distinct physical behaviors. This poses challenges to traditional rigid-body physics engines. Particle-based simulators have been…
Soft pneumatic actuators have seen applications in many soft robotic systems, and their pressure-driven nature presents unique challenges and opportunities for controlling their motion. In this work, we present a new concept: designing and…
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…
In this paper, we present a touch technology to achieve tactile interactivity for human-robot interaction (HRI) in soft robotics. By combining a capacitive touch sensor with an online solid mechanics simulation provided by the SOFA…
This paper introduces a novel compliant mechanism combining lightweight and energy dissipation for aerial physical interaction. Weighting 400~g at take-off, the mechanism is actuated in the forward body direction, enabling precise position…
Soft-growing robots are innovative devices that feature plant-inspired growth to navigate environments. Thanks to their embodied intelligence of adapting to their surroundings and the latest innovation in actuation and manufacturing, it is…
We present a computational design system that assists users to model, optimize, and fabricate quad-robots with soft skins.Our system addresses the challenging task of predicting their physical behavior by fully integrating the multibody…
Soft robots, while highly adaptable to diverse environments through various actuation methods, still face significant performance boundary due to the inherent properties of materials. These limitations manifest in the challenge of…
Roboticists have been seeking to address this situation in recent years through the use of soft robots. Unfortunately, identifying appropriate models for the complete analysis and investigation of soft robots for design and control purposes…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
In this work, we present a hybrid simulator for space docking and robotic proximity operations methodology. This methodology also allows for the emulation of a target robot operating in a complex environment by using an actual robot. The…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
Soft growing robots, commonly referred to as vine robots, have demonstrated remarkable ability to interact safely and robustly with unstructured and dynamic environments. It is therefore natural to exploit contact with the environment for…
In this paper, a reinforced soft robot prototype with a custom-designed actuator-space string encoder are created to investigate dynamic soft robotic trajectory tracking. The soft robot prototype embedded with the proposed adaptive…
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…
We propose a novel tri-fingered soft robotic gripper with decoupled stiffness and shape control capability for performing adaptive grasping with minimum system complexity. The proposed soft fingers adaptively conform to object shapes…
Many robots are not equipped with a manipulator and many objects are not suitable for prehensile manipulation (such as large boxes and cylinders). In these cases, pushing is a simple yet effective non-prehensile skill for robots to interact…
Robot hands that imitate the shape of the human body have been actively studied, and various materials and mechanisms have been proposed to imitate the human body. Although the use of soft materials is advantageous in that it can imitate…
Soft robots employing compliant materials and deformable structures offer great potential for wearable devices that are comfortable and safe for human interaction. However, achieving both structural integrity and compliance for comfort…
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,…