Related papers: A Dynamics Simulator for Soft Growing Robots
Accurately modeling soft robots in simulation is computationally expensive and commonly falls short of representing the real world. This well-known discrepancy, known as the sim-to-real gap, can have several causes, such as coarsely…
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…
This paper presents an open-source MATLAB/Simulink physics simulator for rigid-body articulated systems, including manipulators and floating-base robots. Thanks to MATLAB/Simulink features like MATLAB system classes and Simulink function…
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 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…
This paper addresses the challenges of distributed formation control in multiple mobile robots, introducing a novel approach that enhances real-world practicability. We first introduce a distributed estimator using a variable structure and…
Untethered soft robots that locomote using electrothermally-responsive materials like shape memory alloy (SMA) face challenging design constraints for sensing actuator states. At the same time, modeling of actuator behaviors faces steep…
Vine robots extend their tubular bodies by everting material from the tip, enabling navigation in complex environments with a minimalist soft body. Despite their promise for field applications, especially in the urban search and rescue…
Soft robotics has been a trending topic within the robotics community for almost two decades. However, available tools for the modeling and analysis of soft robots are still limited. This paper introduces a user-friendly MATLAB toolbox,…
The fields of soft and bio-inspired robotics promise to imbue synthetic systems with capabilities found in the natural world. However, many of these biological capabilities are yet to be realized. For example, vines in nature direct growth…
Soft robots are made of compliant materials and perform tasks that are challenging for rigid robots. However, their continuum nature makes it difficult to develop model-based control strategies. This work presents a robust model-based…
This paper introduces a novel approach for modeling the dynamics of soft robots, utilizing a differentiable filter architecture. The proposed approach enables end-to-end training to learn system dynamics, noise characteristics, and temporal…
Soft, tip-extending "vine" robots offer a unique mode of inspection and manipulation in highly constrained environments. For practicality, it is desirable that the distal end of the robot can be manipulated freely, while the body remains…
World models allow autonomous agents to plan and explore by predicting the visual outcomes of different actions. However, for robot manipulation, it is challenging to accurately model the fine-grained robot-object interaction within the…
Development of applications related to closed-loop control requires either testing on the field or on a realistic simulator, with the latter being more convenient, inexpensive, safe, and leading to shorter development cycles. To address…
Control of soft robotic manipulators remains a challenge for designs with advanced capabilities and novel actuation. Two significant limitations are multi-axis, three-dimensional motion of soft bodies alongside actuator dynamics and…
Many manipulation tasks require the robot to control the contact between a grasped compliant tool and the environment, e.g. scraping a frying pan with a spatula. However, modeling tool-environment interaction is difficult, especially when…
Rapid robotic system development sets a demand for multi-disciplinary methods and tools to explore and compare design alternatives. In this paper, we present collaborative modeling that combines discrete-event models of controller software…
Developing robot controllers in a simulated environment is advantageous but transferring the controllers to the target environment presents challenges, often referred to as the "sim-to-real gap". We present a method for continuous…
Today robots must be safe, versatile, and user-friendly to operate in unstructured and human-populated environments. Dynamical system-based imitation learning enables robots to perform complex tasks stably and without explicit programming,…