Related papers: A soft robot that adapts to environments through s…

A robot's mechanical parts routinely wear out from normal functioning and can be lost to injury. For autonomous robots operating in isolated or hostile environments, repair from a human operator is often not possible. Thus, much work has…

Real-time proprioception is a challenging problem for soft robots, which have almost infinite degrees-of-freedom in body deformation. When multiple actuators are used, it becomes more difficult as deformation can also occur on actuators…

Soft growing robots, are a type of robots that are designed to move and adapt to their environment in a similar way to how plants grow and move with potential applications where they could be used to navigate through tight spaces, dangerous…

We propose to make the physical characteristics of a robot oscillate while it learns to improve its behavioral performance. We consider quantities such as mass, actuator strength, and size that are usually fixed in a robot, and show that…

Soft robotic snakes made of compliant materials can continuously deform their bodies and, therefore, mimic the biological snakes' flexible and agile locomotion gaits better than their rigid-bodied counterparts. Without wheel support, to…

Morphological regeneration is an important feature that highlights the environmental adaptive capacity of biological systems. Lack of this regenerative capacity significantly limits the resilience of machines and the environments they can…

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…

Compared to conventional wheeled transportation systems designed for flat surfaces, soft robots exhibit exceptional adaptability to various terrains, enabling stable movement in complex environments. However, due to the risk of collision…

Both the design and control of a robot play equally important roles in its task performance. However, while optimal control is well studied in the machine learning and robotics community, less attention is placed on finding the optimal…

Simulating soft robots in cluttered environments remains an open problem due to the challenge of capturing complex dynamics and interactions with the environment. Furthermore, fast simulation is desired for quickly exploring robot behaviors…

The emergence of vision catalysed a pivotal evolutionary advancement, enabling organisms not only to perceive but also to interact intelligently with their environment. This transformation is mirrored by the evolution of robotic systems,…

We present controllers that enable mobile robots to persistently monitor or sweep a changing environment. The changing environment is modeled as a field which grows in locations that are not within range of a robot, and decreases in…

The field of evolutionary robotics uses principles of natural evolution to design robots. In this paper, we study the effect of adding a new module inspired by the skeletal muscle to the existing RoboGen framework: the linear actuator.…

Soft robots are typically approximated as low-dimensional systems, especially when learning-based methods are used. This leads to models that are limited in their capability to predict the large number of deformation modes and interactions…

Soft robots have demonstrated superior flexibility and functionality than conventional rigid robots. These versatile devices can respond to a wide range of external stimuli (including light, magnetic field, heat, electric field, etc.), and…

Evolutionary robot systems are usually affected by the properties of the environment indirectly through selection. In this paper, we present and investigate a system where the environment also has a direct effect: through regulation. We…

It has been a great challenge to develop robots that are able to perform complex movement patterns with high speed and, simultaneously, high accuracy. Copepods are animals found in freshwater and saltwater habitats that can have extremely…

Soft robots have a myriad of potentials because of their intrinsically compliant bodies, enabling safe interactions with humans and adaptability to unpredictable environments. However, most of them have limited actuation speeds, require…

Soft robotic manipulators provide numerous advantages over conventional rigid manipulators in fragile environments such as the marine environment. However, developing analytic inverse models necessary for shape, motion, and force control of…

Contemporary robots have become exceptionally skilled at achieving specific tasks in structured environments. However, they often fail when faced with the limitless permutations of real-world unstructured environments. This motivates…