Related papers: Origami-inspired soft twisting actuator
Despite advances in localization and navigation, aerial robots inevitably remain susceptible to accidents and collisions. In this work, we propose a passive foldable airframe as a protective mechanism for a small aerial robot. A foldable…
Flexible robots have advantages over rigid robots in their ability to conform physically to their environment and to form a wide variety of shapes. Sensing the force applied by or to flexible robots is useful for both navigation and…
Robot arms that assist humans should be able to pick up, move, and release everyday objects. Today's assistive robot arms use rigid grippers to pinch items between fingers; while these rigid grippers are well suited for large and heavy…
Grasping objects with diverse mechanical properties, such as heavy, slippery, or fragile items, remains a significant challenge in robotics. Conventional rigid grippers typically rely on increasing the normal forces to secure an object,…
This paper presents a soft robot finger capable of adaptive-twist deformation to grasp objects by wrapping them. For a soft hand to grasp and pick-up one object from densely contained multiple objects, a soft finger requires the…
Thick origami structures are considered here as assemblies of polygonal panels hinged to each other along their edges according to a corresponding origami crease pattern. The determination of the internal actions caused by external loads in…
Electro-thermally actuated origami provides a novel method for creating 3-D systems with advanced morphing and functional capabilities. However, it is currently difficult to simulate the multi-physical behavior of such systems because the…
This paper presents a soft earthworm robot that is capable of both efficient locomotion and obstacle avoidance. The robot is designed to replicate the unique locomotion mechanisms of earthworms, which enable them to move through narrow and…
Research in soft manipulators has significantly enhanced object grasping capabilities, thanks to their adaptability to various shapes and sizes. Applying this technology to on-orbit servicing, especially during the capture and containment…
Origami-inspired robots with multiple advantages, such as being lightweight, requiring less assembly, and exhibiting exceptional deformability, have received substantial and sustained attention. However, the existing origami-inspired robots…
Soft robotics hold promise in the development of safe yet powered assistive wearable devices for infants. Key to this is the development of closed-loop controllers that can help regulate pneumatic pressure in the device's actuators in an…
Tree fruit growers around the world are facing labor shortages for critical operations, including harvest and pruning. There is a great interest in developing robotic solutions for these labor-intensive tasks, but current efforts have been…
Biomimetic entirely soft robots with animal-like behavior and integrated artificial nervous systems will open up totally new perspectives and applications. However, until now all presented studies on soft robots were limited to partly soft…
Handed Shearing Auxetics (HSA) are a promising structure for making electrically driven robots with distributed compliance that convert a motors rotation and torque into extension and force. We overcame past limitations on the range of…
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…
Although wheeled robots have been predominant for planetary exploration, their geometry limits their capabilities when traveling over steep slopes, through rocky terrains, and in microgravity. Legged robots equipped with grippers are a…
Regrasping on fixtures is a promising approach to reduce pose uncertainty in robotic assembly, but conventional rigid fixtures lack adaptability and require dedicated designs for each part. To overcome this limitation, we propose a soft jig…
While rigid robots are extensively used in various applications, they are limited in the tasks they can perform and can be unsafe in close human-robot interactions. Soft robots on the other hand surpass the capabilities of rigid robots in…
Soft robots, inspired by elephant trunks or octopus arms, offer extraordinary flexibility to bend, twist, and elongate in ways that rigid robots cannot. However, their motion planning remains a challenge, especially in cluttered…
Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a promising solution for handling the complexity of fabricating soft robots. However, the AM of hyperelastic materials is still challenging with a limited material range. Within this work, pellet-based 3D…