Related papers: Sim2Real for Soft Robotic Fish via Differentiable …
Simulating object dynamics from real-world perception shows great promise for digital twins and robotic manipulation but often demands labor-intensive measurements and expertise. We present a fully automated Real2Sim pipeline that generates…
Learning the inverse dynamics of soft continuum robots remains challenging due to high-dimensional nonlinearities and complex actuation coupling. Conventional feedback-based controllers often suffer from control chattering due to corrective…
Discrete simulation methods are efficient tools to investigate the complex behaviors of complex fluids made of either dry granular materials or dilute suspensions. By contrast, materials made of soft and/or concentrated units (emulsions,…
While its biological significance is well-documented, its application in soft robotics, particularly for the transport of fragile and irregularly shaped objects, remains underexplored. This study presents a modular soft robotic actuator…
Tensegrity robots, composed of rigid rods and flexible cables, exhibit high strength-to-weight ratios and significant deformations, which enable them to navigate unstructured terrains and survive harsh impacts. They are hard to control,…
High-fidelity physics simulation is essential for scalable robotic learning, but the sim-to-real gap persists, especially for tasks involving complex, dynamic, and discontinuous interactions like physical contacts. Explicit system…
Granular materials are of critical interest to many robotic tasks in planetary science, construction, and manufacturing. However, the dynamics of granular materials are complex and often computationally very expensive to simulate. We…
We present a differentiable dynamics solver that is able to handle frictional contact for rigid and deformable objects within a unified framework. Through a principled mollification of normal and tangential contact forces, our method…
Swimming microrobots are increasingly developed with complex materials and dynamic shapes and are expected to operate in complex environments in which the system dynamics are difficult to model and positional control of the microrobot is…
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…
Learning control policies in simulation enables rapid, safe, and cost-effective development of advanced robotic capabilities. However, transferring these policies to the real world remains difficult due to the sim-to-real gap, where…
This paper presents a novel soft robotic system for a deformable mannequin that can be employed to physically realize the 3D geometry of different human bodies. The soft membrane on a mannequin is deformed by inflating several curved…
Soft robots are known for their ability to perform tasks with great adaptability, enabled by their distributed, non-uniform stiffness and actuation. Bending is the most fundamental motion for soft robot design, but creating robust, 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…
The dynamics of flexible filaments entrained in flow, important for understanding many biological and industrial processes, are computationally expensive to model with full-physics simulations. This work describes a data-driven technique to…
The accuracy and fidelity of deformation simulations are highly dependent upon the underlying constitutive material model. Commonly used linear or nonlinear constitutive material models only cover a tiny part of possible material behavior.…
Controlling the deformation of flexible objects is challenging due to their non-linear dynamics and high-dimensional configuration space. This work presents a differentiable Material Point Method (MPM) simulator targeted at control…
Soft growing robots, commonly referred to as vine robots, have demonstrated remarkable ability to interact safely and robustly with unstructured and dynamic environments. It is therefore natural to exploit contact with the environment for…
Obtaining dynamic models of continuum soft robots is central to the analysis and control of soft robots, and researchers have devoted much attention to the challenge of proposing both data-driven and first-principle solutions. Both avenues…
The ocean vast unexplored regions and diverse soft-bodied marine organisms have spurred interest in bio-inspired underwater soft robotics. Recent advances have enabled new capabilities in underwater movement, sensing, and interaction.…