Related papers: Active entanglement enables stochastic, topologica…
Customized grippers have broad applications in industrial assembly lines. Compared with general parallel grippers, the customized grippers have specifically designed fingers to increase the contact area with the workpieces and improve the…
Performing a grasp is a pivotal capability for a robotic gripper. We propose a new evaluation approach of grasping stability via constructing a model of grasping stiffness based on the theory of contact mechanics. First, the mathematical…
Precise in-hand manipulation of force-sensitive objects typically requires judicious coordinated force planning as well as accurate contact force feedback and control. Unlike multi-arm platforms with gripper end effectors, multi-fingered…
Inspired by widely used soft fingers on grasping, we propose a method of rigid-soft interactive learning, aiming at reducing the time of data collection. In this paper, we classify the interaction categories into Rigid-Rigid, Rigid-Soft,…
Collocated tactile sensing is a fundamental enabling technology for dexterous manipulation. However, deformable sensors introduce complex dynamics between the robot, grasped object, and environment that must be considered for fine…
Granular jamming has recently become popular in soft robotics with widespread applications including industrial gripping, surgical robotics and haptics. Previous work has investigated the use of various techniques that exploit the nature of…
We introduce the dynamic grasp synthesis task: given an object with a known 6D pose and a grasp reference, our goal is to generate motions that move the object to a target 6D pose. This is challenging, because it requires reasoning about…
Polymer entanglements lead to complicated topological constraints and interactions between neighbouring chains in a dense solution or melt. Entanglements can be treated in a mean field approach, within the famous reptation model, since they…
Regulating contact forces with high precision is crucial for grasping and manipulating fragile or deformable objects. We aim to utilize the dexterity of human hands to regulate the contact forces for robotic hands and exploit human…
Robots' behavior and performance are determined both by hardware and software. The design process of robotic systems is a complex journey that involves multiple phases. Throughout this process, the aim is to tackle various criteria…
This work proposes a novel generative design tool for passive grippers -- robot end effectors that have no additional actuation and instead leverage the existing degrees of freedom in a robotic arm to perform grasping tasks. Passive…
Biological systems, such as the octopus, exhibit masterful cross-scale manipulation by adaptively reconfiguring their entire form, a capability that remains elusive in robotics. Conventional soft grippers, while compliant, are mostly…
Aerial manipulation requires force-aware capabilities to enable safe and effective grasping and physical interaction. Previous works often rely on heavy, expensive force sensors unsuitable for typical quadrotor platforms, or perform…
Enabling multi-fingered robots to grasp and manipulate objects with human-like dexterity is especially challenging during the dynamic, continuous hand-object interactions. Closed-loop feedback control is essential for dexterous hands to…
Softer means stickier for solid adhesives, because material compliance facilitates close contact between non-conformal surfaces. Recent discoveries have revealed that soft materials can exhibit a rich array of new physics arising from…
Motivated to understand the behavior of biological filaments interacting with membranes of various types, we study a theoretical model for the shape and thermodynamics of intrinsically-helical filaments bound to curved membranes. We show…
Rigid body interactions are fundamental to numerous scientific disciplines, but remain challenging to simulate due to their abrupt nonlinear nature and sensitivity to complex, often unknown environmental factors. These challenges call for…
In essence, successful grasp boils down to correct responses to multiple contact events between fingertips and objects. In most scenarios, tactile sensing is adequate to distinguish contact events. Due to the nature of high dimensionality…
Contrary to the stunning feats observed in birds of prey, aerial manipulation and grasping with flying robots still lack versatility and agility. Conventional approaches using rigid manipulators require precise positioning and are subject…
Macromolecules can gain special properties by adopting knotted conformations, but engineering knotted macromolecules is a challenging task. Here we surprisingly observed that knotting can be very effectively produced in active polymers.…