Related papers: Data-driven Actuator Selection for Artificial Musc…
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…
The design of robots that are light, soft, powerful is a grand challenge. Since they can easily adapt to dynamic environments, soft robotic systems have the potential of changing the status-quo of bulky robotics. A crucial component of soft…
Animals can accomplish many incredible behavioral feats across a wide range of operational environments and scales that current robots struggle to match. One explanation for this performance gap is the extraordinary properties of the…
Soft robotics technologies have gained growing interest in recent years, which allows various applications from manufacturing to human-robot interaction. Pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM), a typical soft actuator, has been widely applied to…
Skeletal muscle-based biohybrid actuators have proved to be a promising component in soft robotics, offering efficient movement. However, their intrinsic biological variability and nonlinearity pose significant challenges for…
Soft robots show compliance and have infinite degrees of freedom. Thanks to these properties, such robots can be leveraged for surgery, rehabilitation, biomimetics, unstructured environment exploring, and industrial grippers. In this case,…
Soft robots have immense potential given their inherent safety and adaptability, but challenges in soft actuator forces and design constraints have limited scaling up soft robots to larger sizes. Electrothermal shape memory alloy (SMA)…
Humans are able to outperform robots in terms of robustness, versatility, and learning of new tasks in a wide variety of movements. We hypothesize that highly nonlinear muscle dynamics play a large role in providing inherent stability,…
The mechanical complexity of soft robots creates significant challenges for their model-based control. Specifically, linear data-driven models have struggled to control soft robots on complex, spatially extended paths that explore regions…
To rationalize the relatively high investment that industrial automation systems entail, research in the field of intelligent machines should target high value functions such as fettling, die-finishing, deburring, and fixtureless…
Modern robotics is gravitating toward increasingly collaborative human robot interaction. Tools such as acceleration policies can naturally support the realization of reactive, adaptive, and compliant robots. These tools require us to model…
Muscles of the human body are composed of tiny actuators made up of myosin and actin filaments. They can exert force in various shapes such as curved or flat, under contact forces and deformations from the environment. On the other hand,…
Soft robotics is a rapidly growing field that spans the fields of chemistry, materials science, and engineering. Due to the diverse background of the field, there have been contrasting naming schemes such as 'intelligent', 'smart' and…
In the context of surgery, robots can provide substantial assistance by performing small, repetitive tasks such as suturing, needle exchange, and tissue retraction, thereby enabling surgeons to concentrate on more complex aspects of the…
Robots using cellular-like redundant binary actuators could outmatch electric-gearmotor robotic systems in terms of reliability, force-to-weight ratio and cost. This paper presents a robust fault tolerant control scheme that is designed to…
Tendon drives paired with soft muscle actuation enable faster and safer robots while potentially accelerating skill acquisition. Still, these systems are rarely used in practice due to inherent nonlinearities, friction, and hysteresis,…
Autonomous robots have the potential to serve as versatile caregivers that improve quality of life for millions of people worldwide. Yet, conducting research in this area presents numerous challenges, including the risks of physical…
Continuum and soft robots can leverage complex actuator shapes to take on useful shapes while actuating only a few of their many degrees of freedom. Continuum robots that also grow increase the range of potential shapes that can be actuated…
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 recent advancements in machine learning techniques have steered us towards the data-driven design of products. Motivated by this objective, the present study proposes an automated design methodology that employs data-driven methods to…