Related papers: Hybrid Soft Robots Incorporating Soft and Stiff El…
Soft actuators have drawn significant attention from researchers with an inherently compliant design to address the safety issues in physical human-robot interactions. However, they are also vulnerable and pose new challenges in the design,…
Tensegrity structures are lightweight, can undergo large deformations, and have outstanding robustness capabilities. These unique properties inspired roboticists to investigate their use. However, the morphological design, control,…
Robotic tails can enhance the stability and maneuverability of mobile robots, but current designs face a trade-off between the power of rigid systems and the safety of soft ones. Rigid tails generate large inertial effects but pose risks in…
Incorporating both flexible and rigid components in robot designs offers a unique solution to the limitations of traditional rigid robotics by enabling both compliance and strength. This paper explores the challenges and solutions for…
Soft robotic snakes (SRSs) have a unique combination of continuous and compliant properties that allow them to imitate the complex movements of biological snakes. Despite the previous attempts to develop SRSs, many have been limited to…
Robots built from soft materials will inherently apply lower environmental forces than their rigid counterparts, and therefore may be more suitable in sensitive settings with unintended contact. However, these robots' applied forces result…
Soft robotic systems present a variety of new opportunities for solving complex problems. The use of soft robotic grippers, for example, can simplify the complexity in tasks such as the of grasping irregular and delicate objects. Adoption…
Soft robots are notoriously hard to control. This is partly due to the scarcity of models able to capture their complex continuum mechanics, resulting in a lack of control methodologies that take full advantage of body compliance. Currently…
Legged robots constructed from soft materials are commonly claimed to demonstrate safer, more robust environmental interactions than their rigid counterparts. However, this motivating feature of soft robots requires more rigorous…
This paper proposes a new variable stiffness soft gripper that enables high-performance grasping tasks in industrial applications. The design of the proposed monolithic soft gripper includes a middle bellow and two side bellows (i.e.,…
In this paper, a reinforced soft robot prototype with a custom-designed actuator-space string encoder are created to investigate dynamic soft robotic trajectory tracking. The soft robot prototype embedded with the proposed adaptive…
Soft robotic manipulators are attractive for a range of applications such as medical interventions or industrial inspections in confined environments. A myriad of soft robotic manipulators have been proposed in the literature, but their…
Realizing a soft manipulator with biologically comparable flexibility and versatility often requires careful selection of materials and actuation, as well as attentive design of its structure, perception, and control. Here, we report a new…
High-performance closed-loop control of truly soft continuum manipulators has remained elusive. Experimental demonstrations have largely relied on sufficiently stiff, piecewise architectures in which each actuated segment behaves as a…
Soft robots are distinguished by their flexibility and adaptability, allowing them to perform nearly impossible tasks for rigid robots. However, controlling their behavior is challenging due to their nonlinear material response and infinite…
Humanoid robots are envisioned as general-purpose platforms in human-centered environments, yet their deployment is limited by vulnerability to falls and the risks posed by rigid metal-plastic structures to people and surroundings. We…
Force and proximity sensors are key in robotics, especially when applied in collaborative robots that interact physically or cognitively with humans in real unstructured environments. However, most existing sensors for use in robotics are…
Simulation is an important step in robotics for creating control policies and testing various physical parameters. Soft robotics is a field that presents unique physical challenges for simulating its subjects due to the nonlinearity of…
Snakes are a remarkable evolutionary success story. Many snake-inspired robots have been proposed over the years. Soft robotic snakes (SRS) with their continuous and smooth bending capability better mimic their biological counterparts'…
Human-robot physical interaction (pHRI) is a rapidly evolving research field with significant implications for physical therapy, search and rescue, and telemedicine. However, a major challenge lies in accurately understanding human…