Related papers: Expanding the Design Space for Electrically-Driven…
Back injuries are the most prevalent work-related musculoskeletal disorders and represent a major cause of disability. Although innovations in wearable robots aim to alleviate this hazard, the majority of existing exoskeletons are obtrusive…
Robotic grasping under uncertainty remains a fundamental challenge due to its uncertain and contact-rich nature. Traditional rigid robotic hands, with limited degrees of freedom and compliance, rely on complex model-based and heavy feedback…
The design of physical compliance -- its location, degree, and structure -- affects robot performance and robustness in contact-rich tasks. While compliance is often used in the robot's joints, flange, or end-effector, this paper proposes…
This paper presents the application of a learning control approach for the realization of a fast and reliable pick-and-place application with a spherical soft robotic arm. The arm is characterized by a lightweight design and exhibits…
The purpose of this research is to design, fabricate and test a tendon driven a continuum soft robot with three modular segments, each of which has a tunable stiffness enabled by layer jamming technology. Compared with previous studies, the…
Variable stiffness actuators undergo lower peak force in contacts compared to their rigid counterparts, and are thus safer for human-robot interaction. Furthermore, they can store energy in their elastic element and can release it later to…
Pneumatic actuation benefits soft robotics by facilitating compliance, enabling large volume change, and concentrating actuator weight away from the end-effector. However, portability is compromised when pneumatic actuators are tethered to…
Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…
The field of robotics is a quickly evolving feat of technology that accepts contributions from various genres of science. Neuroscience, Physiology, Chemistry, Material science, Computer science, and the wide umbrella of mechatronics have…
Fluid-driven elastomeric actuators (FEAs) are among the most popular actuators in the emerging field of soft robotics. Intrinsically compliant, with continuum of motion, large strokes, little friction, and high power-to-weight ratio, they…
Soft robots are intrinsically capable of adapting to different environments by changing their shape in response to interaction forces with the environment. However, sensing and feedback are still required for higher level decisions and…
Hand impairment following neurological disorders substantially limits independence in activities of daily living, motivating the development of effective assistive and rehabilitation strategies. Soft robotic gloves have attracted growing…
Shared autonomy holds promise for improving the usability and accessibility of assistive robotic arms, but current methods often rely on costly expert demonstrations and remain static after pretraining, limiting their ability to handle…
Inspired by the vertebrate branch of the animal kingdom, articulated soft robots are robotic systems embedding elastic elements into a classic rigid (skeleton-like) structure. Leveraging on their bodies elasticity, soft robots promise to…
Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) have garnered extensive attention especially in soft robotic applications over the past few decades owing to the advantages of lightweight, large strain, fast response and high energy density. However,…
Soft robots have demonstrated superior flexibility and functionality than conventional rigid robots. These versatile devices can respond to a wide range of external stimuli (including light, magnetic field, heat, electric field, etc.), and…
Dexterous manipulation requires precise geometric reasoning, yet existing visuo-tactile learning methods struggle with sub-millimeter precision tasks that are routine for traditional model-based approaches. We identify a key limitation:…
This paper presents a method for achieving high-speed running of a quadruped robot by considering the actuator torque-speed operating region in reinforcement learning. The physical properties and constraints of the actuator are included in…
Soft robots have the potential to revolutionize the use of robotic systems with their capability of establishing safe, robust, and adaptable interactions with their environment, but their precise control remains challenging. In contrast,…
Robots usually establish contacts at rigid surfaces with near-zero relative velocities. Otherwise, impact-induced energy propagates in the robot's linkage and may cause irreversible damage to the hardware. Moreover, abrupt changes in…