Related papers: Soft Lattice Modules that Behave Independently and…

Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…

In collective motion, perceptually-limited individuals move in an ordered manner, without centralized control. The perception of each individual is highly localized, as is its ability to interact with others. While natural collective motion…

The vision of creating entirely-soft robots capable of performing complex tasks will be accomplished only when the controllers required for autonomous operation can be fully implemented on soft components. Despite recent advances in…

There is a growing need for soft robotic platforms that perform gentle, precise handling of a wide variety of objects. Existing surface-based manipulation systems, however, lack the compliance and tactile feedback needed for delicate…

Spontaneous self-assembly in molecular systems is a fundamental route to both biological and engineered soft matter. Simple micellisation, emulsion formation, and polymer mixing principles are well understood. However, the principles behind…

Mechanical metamaterials are periodic lattice structures with complex unit cell architectures that can achieve extraordinary mechanical properties beyond the capability of bulk materials. A new class of metamaterials is proposed, whose…

Humans possess a remarkable ability to react to unpredictable perturbations through immediate mechanical responses, which harness the visco-elastic properties of muscles to maintain balance. Inspired by this behaviour, we propose a novel…

This study examines the mechanical behavior of a novel class of mechanical metamaterials alternating pentamode lattices and stiffening plates. The unit cell of such lattices consists of a sub-lattice of the face cubic-centered unit cell…

Smart factories that allow flexible production of highly individualized goods require flexible robots, usable in efficient assembly lines. Compliant robots can work safely in shared environments with domain experts, who have to program such…

The design of intelligent materials often draws parallels with the complex adaptive behaviors of biological organisms, where robust functionality stems from sophisticated hierarchical organization and emergent long-distance coordination…

Bioinspired snake robotics has been a highly active area of research over the years and resulted in many prototypes. Much of these prototypes takes the form of serially jointed-rigid bodies. The emergence of soft robotics contributed to a…

Soft robotics holds tremendous potential for various applications, especially in unstructured environments such as search and rescue operations. However, the lack of autonomy and teleoperability, limited capabilities, absence of gait…

Many living and non-living complex systems can be modeled and understood as collective systems made of heterogeneous components that self-organize and generate nontrivial morphological structures and behaviors. This chapter presents a brief…

Shape-programmable soft materials that exhibit integrated multifunctional shape manipulations, including reprogrammable, untethered, fast, and reversible shape transformation and locking, are highly desirable for a plethora of applications,…

The functional demands of robotic systems often require completing various tasks or behaviors under the effect of disturbances or uncertain environments. Of increasing interest is the autonomy for dynamic robots, such as multirotors, motor…

Inspired by natural cellular materials such as trabecular bone, lattice structures have been developed as a new type of lightweight material. In this paper we present a novel method to design lattice structures that conform with both the…

This paper presents an overview and discussion of magnetocapillary self-assemblies. New results are presented, in particular concerning the possible development of future applications. These self-organizing structures possess the notable…

Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…

Animals can finely modulate their leg stiffness to interact with complex terrains and absorb sudden shocks. In feats like leaping and sprinting, animals demonstrate a sophisticated interplay of opposing muscle pairs that actively modulate…

Real-life control tasks involve matters of various substances---rigid or soft bodies, liquid, gas---each with distinct physical behaviors. This poses challenges to traditional rigid-body physics engines. Particle-based simulators have been…