Related papers: Hybrid Soft Robots Incorporating Soft and Stiff El…

Hybrid rigid-soft robots combine the precision of rigid manipulators with the compliance and adaptability of soft arms, offering a promising approach for versatile grasping in unstructured environments. However, coordinating hybrid robots…

For robot manipulation, both the controller and end-effector design are crucial. Soft grippers are generalizable by deforming to different geometries, but designing such a gripper and finding its grasp pose remains challenging. In this…

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…

Continuum soft robots are mechanical systems entirely made of continuously deformable elements. This design solution aims to bring robots closer to invertebrate animals and soft appendices of vertebrate animals (e.g., an elephant's trunk, a…

Soft robots, compared to rigid robots, possess inherent advantages, including higher degrees of freedom, compliance, and enhanced safety, which have contributed to their increasing application across various fields. Among these benefits,…

Soft Robots distinguish themselves from traditional robots by embracing flexible kinematics. Because of their recent emergence, there exist numerous uncharted territories, including novel actuators, manufacturing processes, and advanced…

Soft robots offer remarkable adaptability and safety advantages over rigid robots, but modeling their complex, nonlinear dynamics remains challenging. Strain-based models have recently emerged as a promising candidate to describe such…

Recently, suction-based robotic systems with microscopic features or active suction components have been proposed to grip rough and irregular surfaces. However, sophisticated fabrication methods or complex control systems are required for…

Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…

This paper presents the design, control, and applications of a multi-segment soft robotic arm. In order to design a soft arm with large load capacity, several design principles are proposed by analyzing two kinds of buckling issues, under…

We propose a mechanically simple and cheap design for a series elastic actuator with controllable stiffness. Such characteristics are necessary for animals for running, jumping, throwing, and manipulation, yet in robots, variable stiffness…

The deployment of complex soft robots in multiphysics environments requires advanced simulation frameworks that not only capture interactions between different types of material, but also translate accurately to real-world performance. Soft…

Snake robots are characterized by their ability to navigate through small spaces and loose terrain by utilizing efficient cyclic forms of locomotion. Soft snake robots are a subset of these robots which utilize soft, compliant actuators to…

Soft robots can safely interact with environments because of their mechanical compliance. Self-collision is also employed in the modern design of soft robots to enhance their performance during different tasks. However, developing an…

Compared to traditional rigid robotics, soft robotics has attracted increasing attention due to its advantages as compliance, safety, and low cost. As an essential part of soft robotics, the soft robotic gripper also shows its superior…

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…

Grasping a variety of objects remains a key challenge in the development of versatile robotic systems. The human hand is remarkably dexterous, capable of grasping and manipulating objects with diverse shapes, mechanical properties, and…

Soft robots show compliance and have infinite degrees of freedom. Thanks to these properties, such robots can be leveraged for surgery, rehabilitation, biomimetics, unstructured environment exploring, and industrial grippers. In this case,…

Grasping has long been considered an important and practical task in robotic manipulation. Yet achieving robust and efficient grasps of diverse objects is challenging, since it involves gripper design, perception, control and learning, etc.…

Advanced machine learning algorithms require platforms that are extremely robust and equipped with rich sensory feedback to handle extensive trial-and-error learning without relying on strong inductive biases. Traditional robotic designs,…