Related papers: A soft robot that adapts to environments through s…
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,…
Robots built from soft materials will inherently apply lower environmental forces than their rigid counterparts, and therefore may be more suitable in sensitive settings with unintended contact. However, these robots' applied forces result…
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…
Soft pneumatic legged robots show promise in their ability to traverse a range of different types of terrain, including natural unstructured terrain met in applications like precision agriculture. They can adapt their body morphology to the…
Snakes can move through almost any terrain. Although their locomotion on flat surfaces using planar gaits is inherently stable, when snakes deform their body out of plane to traverse complex terrain, maintaining stability becomes a…
Soft robotics has emerged as a promising technology that holds great potential for various application areas. This is due to soft materials unique properties, including flexibility, safety, and shock absorption, among others. Despite many…
Robot co-design, where the morphology of a robot is optimized jointly with a learned policy to solve a specific task, is an emerging area of research. It holds particular promise for soft robots, which are amenable to novel manufacturing…
Soft robotics is an emerging field of research where the robot body is composed of compliant and soft materials. It allows the body to bend, twist, and deform to move or to adapt its shape to the environment for grasping, all of which are…
Navigation and motion control of a robot to a destination are tasks that have historically been performed with the assumption that contact with the environment is harmful. This makes sense for rigid-bodied robots where obstacle collisions…
We present a methodology for fast prototyping of morphologies and controllers for robot locomotion. Going beyond simulation-based approaches, we argue that the form and function of a robot, as well as their interplay with real-world…
Some animals exhibit multi-modal locomotion capability to traverse a wide range of terrains and environments, such as amphibians that can swim and walk or birds that can fly and walk. This capability is extremely beneficial for expanding…
This work provides a complete framework for the simulation, co-optimization, and sim-to-real transfer of the design and control of soft legged robots. The compliance of soft robots provides a form of "mechanical intelligence" -- the ability…
Soft robots have drawn significant attention recently for their ability to achieve rich shapes when interacting with complex environments. However, their elasticity and flexibility compared to rigid robots also pose significant challenges…
While significant research progress has been made in robot learning for control, unique challenges arise when simultaneously co-optimizing morphology. Existing work has typically been tailored for particular environments or representations.…
This paper introduces a new type of soft continuum robot, called SCoReS, which is capable of self-controlling continuously its curvature at the segment level; in contrast to previous designs which either require external forces or machine…
Wearable robots are undergoing a disruptive transition, from the rigid machines that populated the science-fiction world in the early eighties to lightweight robotic apparel, hardly distinguishable from our daily clothes. In less than a…
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…
In the real world, robots with embodiment face various issues such as dynamic continuous changes of the environment and input/output disturbances. The key to solving these issues can be found in daily life; people `do actions associated…
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 naturally designed to perform safe interactions with their environment, like locomotion and manipulation. In the literature, there are now many concepts, often bio-inspired, to propose new modes of locomotion or grasping.…