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Soft robots offer adaptability and safe interaction with complex environments. Rapid prototyping kits that allow soft robots to be assembled easily will allow different geometries to be explored quickly to suit different environments or to…
Magnetic Soft Catheters (MSCs) are capable of miniaturization due to the use of an external magnetic field for actuation. Through careful design of the magnetic elements within the MSC and the external magnetic field, the shape along the…
Dynamic shape-morphing soft materials systems are ubiquitous in living organisms; they are also of rapidly increasing relevance to emerging technologies in soft machines, flexible electronics, and smart medicines. Soft matter equipped with…
To design a general-purpose assembly robot system that can handle objects of various shapes, we propose a soft jig that fits to the shapes of assembly parts. The functionality of the soft jig is based on a jamming gripper developed in the…
Soft elastic composite materials can serve as actuators when they transform changes in external fields into mechanical deformation. Here, we address the corresponding deformational behavior of magnetic gels and elastomers, consisting of…
Living organisms intertwine soft (e.g., muscle) and hard (e.g., bones) materials, giving them an intrinsic flexibility and resiliency often lacking in conventional rigid robots. The emerging field of soft robotics seeks to harness these…
Hard magnetic materials belong to a novel class of soft active materials with the capability of quick, large, and complex deformation via applying an external actuation. They have an extensive range of potential applications in soft robots,…
Soft robots achieve functionality through tight coupling among geometry, material composition, and actuation. As a result, effective design optimization requires these three aspects to be considered jointly rather than in isolation. This…
Cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers (CLCEs) change color under strain, offering attractive prospects for smart textiles, soft robotics, and photonic devices. However, the helical structure of CLCEs averages out the exceptional anisotropy…
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…
In this contribution a magnetoactive elastomer (MAE) of mixed content, i.e., a polymer matrix filled with a mixture of magnetically soft and magnetically hard spherical particles, is considered. The object we focus at is an elementary unit…
Moving a module in a modular robot is a very complex and error-prone process. Unlike in swarm, in the modular robots we are targeting, the moving module must keep the connection to, at least, one other module. In order to miniaturize each…
Soft composite solids are made of inclusions dispersed within soft matrices. They are ubiquitous in nature and form the basis of many biological tissues. In the field of materials science, synthetic soft composites are promising candidates…
For two decades, NdFeB based magnets have been a critical component in a range of electrical devices engaged in energy production and conversion. The magnet shape and the internal microstructure of the selected NdFeB grade govern their…
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…
Common disabilities like stroke and spinal cord injuries may cause loss of motor function in hands. They can be treated with robot assisted rehabilitation techniques, like continuously opening and closing the hand with help of a robot, in a…
Nematic elastomers are programmable soft materials that display large, reversible and predictable deformation under an external stimulus such as a change in temperature or light. While much of the work in the field has focused on actuation…
Soft robotics has the potential to revolutionize robotic locomotion, in particular, soft robotic swimmers offer a minimally invasive and adaptive solution to explore and preserve our oceans. Unfortunately, current soft robotic swimmers are…
Soft robotics leverages deformable materials to develop robots capable of navigating unstructured and dynamic environments. Silicone Voxel-Based Soft Robots (Silibots) are a type of pneumatically actuated soft robots that rely on the…
Traditional robots have rigid links and structures that limit their ability to interact with the dynamics of their immediate environment. For example, conventional robot manipulators with rigid links can only manipulate objects using…