Related papers: A physics-informed, vision-based method to reconst…
Interest in soft continuum arms has increased as their inherent material elasticity enables safe and adaptive interactions with the environment. However to achieve full autonomy in these arms, accurate three-dimensional shape sensing is…
Flexible sensors are increasingly employed in soft robotics and wearable devices to provide proprioception of freeform deformations.Although supervised learning can train shape predictors from sensor signals, prediction accuracy strongly…
Inverse design of slender elastic structures underlies a wide range of applications in computer graphics, flexible electronics, biomedical devices, and soft robotics. Traditional optimization-based approaches, however, are often orders of…
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…
This paper presents a numerical method for the simulation of fluid-structure interaction specifically tailored to interactions between Newtonian fluids and a large number of slender viscoelastic Cosserat rods. Because of their high…
Dexterous manipulation requires careful reasoning over extrinsic contacts. The prevalence of deforming tools in human environments, the use of deformable sensors, and the increasing number of soft robots yields a need for approaches that…
In this paper, it is presented a methodology to estimate the deformation involved between two objects attending to its physical properties. This methodology can be used, for example, in Computational Vision or Computer Graphics…
For soft robots to work effectively in human-centered environments, they need to be able to estimate their state and external interactions based on (proprioceptive) sensors. Estimating disturbances allows a soft robot to perform desirable…
Slender structures, such as rods, often exhibit large nonlinear geometrical deformations even under moderate external forces (e.g., gravity). This characteristic results in a rich variety of morphological changes, making them appealing for…
The Finite Element Method (FEM) is a powerful modeling tool for predicting the behavior of soft robots. However, its use for control can be difficult for non-specialists of numerical computation: it requires an optimization of the…
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…
Modeling deformations of a real object is an important task in computer vision, biomedical engineering and biomechanics. In this paper, we focus on a situation where a three-dimensional object is rotationally deformed about a fixed axis,…
This research proposes a novel adjustable algorithm for reconstructing 3D body shapes from front and side silhouettes. Most recent silhouette-based approaches use a deep neural network trained by silhouettes and key points to estimate the…
Accurate and efficient simulation tools are essential in robotics, enabling the visualization of system dynamics and the validation of control laws before committing resources to physical experimentation. Developing physically accurate…
Robotic grasping of 3D deformable objects (e.g., fruits/vegetables, internal organs, bottles/boxes) is critical for real-world applications such as food processing, robotic surgery, and household automation. However, developing grasp…
The morphology of a slender soft-robot can be modified by sensing its shape via sensors and exerting moments via actuators embedded along its body. The actuating moments required to morph these soft-robots to a desired shape are often…
Over the past decades, we have witnessed a rapid emergence of soft and reconfigurable robots thanks to their capability to interact safely with humans and adapt to complex environments. However, their softness makes accurate control very…
A neural network-based framework is developed and experimentally demonstrated for the problem of estimating the shape of a soft continuum arm (SCA) from noisy measurements of the pose at a finite number of locations along the length of the…
Grasping deformable objects is not well researched due to the complexity in modelling and simulating the dynamic behavior of such objects. However, with the rapid development of physics-based simulators that support soft bodies, the…
We propose a novel integral model describing the motion of curved slender fibers in viscous flow, and develop a numerical method for simulating dynamics of rigid fibers. The model is derived from nonlocal slender body theory (SBT), which…