Related papers: Regenerating Soft Robots through Neural Cellular A…
We explore the locomotion of soft robots in granular medium (GM) resulting from the elastic deformation of slender rods. A low-cost, rapidly fabricable robot inspired by the physiological structure of bacteria is presented. It consists of a…
Soft robotics has emerged as a promising field with the potential to revolutionize industries such as healthcare and manufacturing. However, designing effective soft robots presents challenges, particularly in managing the complex interplay…
This study presents an internalized morphogenesis model for autonomous systems, such as swarm robotics and micro-nanomachines, that eliminates the need for external spatial computation. Traditional self-organizing models often require…
Tensegrity structures are lightweight, can undergo large deformations, and have outstanding robustness capabilities. These unique properties inspired roboticists to investigate their use. However, the morphological design, control,…
Soft object manipulation tasks in domestic scenes pose a significant challenge for existing robotic skill learning techniques due to their complex dynamics and variable shape characteristics. Since learning new manipulation skills from…
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…
Surgical robot simulation platform plays a crucial role in enhancing training efficiency and advancing research on robot learning. Much effort have been made by scholars on developing open-sourced surgical robot simulators to facilitate…
Soft growing robots are novel devices that mimic plant-like growth for navigation in cluttered or dangerous environments. Their ability to adapt to surroundings, combined with advancements in actuation and manufacturing technologies, allows…
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…
Tip-extending soft robots that "grow" via pneumatic eversion of their body material have demonstrated applications in exploration of cluttered environments. During growth, the motion and force of the robot tip can be controlled in three…
Exposing an Evolutionary Algorithm that is used to evolve robot controllers to variable conditions is necessary to obtain solutions which are robust and can cross the reality gap. However, we do not yet have methods for analyzing and…
Automatically detecting and recovering from failures is an important but challenging problem for autonomous robots. Most of the recent work on learning to plan from demonstrations lacks the ability to detect and recover from errors in the…
This paper presents a rotation-invariant embedded platform for simulating (neural) cellular automata (NCA) in modular robotic systems. Inspired by previous work on physical NCA, we introduce key innovations that overcome limitations in…
Soft robotics focuses on designing robots with highly deformable materials, allowing them to adapt and operate safely and reliably in unstructured and variable environments. While soft robots offer increased compliance over rigid body…
Due to their ability to move without sliding relative to their environment, soft growing robots are attractive for deploying distributed sensor networks in confined spaces. Sensing of the state of such robots would also add to their…
We present a robot base placement and control method that enables a mobile manipulator to gracefully recover from manipulation failures while performing tasks on-the-move. A mobile manipulator in motion has a limited window to complete a…
Information-theoretic fitness functions are becoming increasingly popular to produce generally useful, task-independent behaviors. One such universal function, dubbed empowerment, measures the amount of control an agent exerts on its…
Soft robots manufactured with flexible materials can be highly compliant and adaptive to their surroundings, which facilitates their application in areas such as dexterous manipulation and environmental exploration. This paper aims at…
Traditional robotic mechanisms contain a series of rigid links connected by rotational joints that provide powered motion, all of which is controlled by a central processor. By contrast, analogous mechanisms found in nature, such as octopus…
When they are damaged or injured, soft biological tissues are able to self-repair and heal. Mechanics is critical during the healing process, as the damaged extracellular matrix (ECM) tends to be replaced with a new undamaged ECM supporting…