Related papers: Controlling a CyberOctopus Soft Arm with Muscle-li…
Intrinsically elastic robots surpass their rigid counterparts in a range of different characteristics. By temporarily storing potential energy and subsequently converting it to kinetic energy, elastic robots are capable of highly dynamic…
Obesity is a chronic disease that can lead to an increased risk of other serious chronic diseases and even death. We present switching and time-delayed feedback-based model free control methods for the dynamic management of body mass and…
In this paper, we present an energy-conservation based control architecture for stable dynamic motion in quadruped robots. We model the robot as a Spring-loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP), a model well-suited to represent the bouncing motion…
This study examines a biology-inspired approach of using reconfigurable articulation to reduce the control requirement for soft robotic arms. We construct a robotic arm by assembling Kresling origami modules that exhibit predictable…
Grasping is a fundamental skill for interacting with and manipulating objects in the environment. However, this ability can be challenging for individuals with hand impairments. Soft hand exoskeletons designed to assist grasping can enhance…
Tool-based scooping is vital in robot-assisted tasks, enabling interaction with objects of varying sizes, shapes, and material states. Recent studies have shown that flexible, reconfigurable soft robotic end-effectors can adapt their shape…
The work presented here is a novel biological approach for the compliant control of a robotic arm in real time (RT). We integrate a spiking cerebellar network at the core of a feedback control loop performing torque-driven control. The…
Soft robots, inspired by elephant trunks or octopus arms, offer extraordinary flexibility to bend, twist, and elongate in ways that rigid robots cannot. However, their motion planning remains a challenge, especially in cluttered…
Soft robots are notoriously hard to control. This is partly due to the scarcity of models able to capture their complex continuum mechanics, resulting in a lack of control methodologies that take full advantage of body compliance. Currently…
With the accelerated development of robot technologies, optimal control becomes one of the central themes of research. In traditional approaches, the controller, by its internal functionality, finds appropriate actions on the basis of the…
Soft robot arms have made significant progress towards completing human-scale tasks, but designing arms for tasks with specific load and workspace requirements remains difficult. A key challenge is the lack of model-based design tools,…
The automatic shape control of deformable objects is a challenging (and currently hot) manipulation problem due to their high-dimensional geometric features and complex physical properties. In this study, a new methodology to manipulate…
Fluidically actuated soft robots have promising capabilities such as inherent compliance and user safety. The control of soft robots needs to properly handle nonlinear actuation dynamics, motion constraints, workspace limitations, and…
We present a control model for an octopus tentacle, based on the dynamics of an inextensible string with curvature constraints and curvature controls. We derive the equations of motion together with an appropriate set of boundary…
Tailoring the design of robot bodies for control purposes is implicitly performed by engineers, however, a methodology or set of tools is largely absent and optimization of morphology (shape, material properties of robot bodies, etc.) is…
Soft robots have been increasingly utilized as sophisticated tools in physical rehabilitation, particularly for assisting patients with neuromotor impairments. However, many soft robotics for rehabilitation applications are characterized by…
Compared with traditional rigid-body robots, soft robots not only exhibit unprecedented adaptation and flexibility but also present novel challenges in their modeling and control because of their infinite degrees of freedom. Most of the…
The functional replication and actuation of complex structures inspired by nature is a longstanding goal for humanity. Creating such complex structures combining soft and rigid features and actuating them with artificial muscles would…
Soft slender robots have attracted more and more research attentions in these years due to their continuity and compliance natures. However, mechanics modeling for soft robots interacting with environment is still an academic challenge…
Recent studies have demonstrated the immense potential of exploiting muscle actuator morphology for natural and robust movement -- in simulation. A validation on real robotic hardware is yet missing. In this study, we emulate muscle…