Related papers: 3D printed cable-driven continuum robots with gene…
Tensegrity robots, composed of rigid rods and flexible cables, exhibit high strength-to-weight ratios and significant deformations, which enable them to navigate unstructured terrains and survive harsh impacts. They are hard to control,…
Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…
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…
Cables are complex, high dimensional, and dynamic objects. Standard approaches to manipulate them often rely on conservative strategies that involve long series of very slow and incremental deformations, or various mechanical fixtures such…
Large image generation and vision models, combined with differentiable rendering technologies, have become powerful tools for generating paths that can be drawn or painted by a robot. However, these tools often overlook the intrinsic…
In this work, we conducted research on deformable object manipulation by robots based on demonstration-enhanced reinforcement learning (RL). To improve the learning efficiency of RL, we enhanced the utilization of demonstration data from…
In this project, we focus on human-robot interaction in caregiving scenarios like bathing, where physical contact is inevitable and necessary for proper task execution because force must be applied to the skin. Using finite element…
This paper presents a framework for aerial manipulation of an extensible cable that combines a high-fidelity model based on partial differential equations (PDEs) with a reduced-order representation suitable for real-time control. The PDEs…
Recently, a new concept for continuum robots capable of producing macro-scale and micro-scale motion has been presented. These robots achieve their multi-scale motion capabilities by coupling direct-actuation of push-pull back-bones for…
In this paper, we discuss a novel continuum robot design that enables the online tuning of the magnetic response at its tip. The proposed method allows for the change of both effective magnetic direction and intensity, introducing steering…
Manual endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) is technically demanding, and existing single-segment robotic tools offer limited dexterity. These limitations motivate the development of more advanced solutions. To address this, DESectBot, a…
Continuum robots with floating bases demonstrate exceptional operational capabilities in confined spaces, such as those encountered in medical surgeries and equipment maintenance. However, developing low-cost solutions for their motion and…
Deformable linear objects (DLOs), such as rods, cables, and ropes, play important roles in daily life. However, manipulation of DLOs is challenging as large geometrically nonlinear deformations may occur during the manipulation process.…
Human-robot co-manipulation of soft materials, such as fabrics, composites, and sheets of paper/cardboard, is a challenging operation that presents several relevant industrial applications. Estimating the deformation state of the…
Continuum robots (CR) offer excellent dexterity and compliance in contrast to rigid-link robots, making them suitable for navigating through, and interacting with, confined environments. However, the study of path planning for CRs while…
Deformable object manipulation (DOM) for robots has a wide range of applications in various fields such as industrial, service and health care sectors. However, compared to manipulation of rigid objects, DOM poses significant challenges for…
In this paper, we propose a novel vision-based control algorithm for regulating the whole body shape of extensible multisection soft continuum manipulators. Contrary to existing vision-based control algorithms in the literature that…
External contact force is one of the most significant information for the robots to model, control, and safely interact with external objects. For continuum robots, it is possible to estimate the contact force based on the measurements of…
This letter considers control of a radially symmetric tripedal friction-driven robot. The robot features 3 servo motors mounted on a 3-D printed chassis 7 cm from the center of mass and separated 120 degrees. These motors drive limbs, which…
Continuum robots are well suited for constrained environments but suffer from low distal stiffness, resulting in large posture errors under external loads. In this paper, we propose a novel structural primitive, the Distal-Stable Beam,…