Related papers: PDE-based Dynamic Control and Estimation of Soft R…
Passive deformation due to compliance is a commonly used benefit of soft robots, providing opportunities to achieve robust actuation with few active degrees of freedom. Soft growing robots in particular have shown promise in navigation of…
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…
This paper proposes a model-based approach to control the shape of a tensegrity system by driving its node position locations. The nonlinear dynamics of the tensegrity system is used to regulate position, velocity, and acceleration to the…
Systems modeled by partial differential equations (PDEs) are at least as ubiquitous as systems that are by nature finite-dimensional and modeled by ordinary differential equations (ODEs). And yet, systematic and readily usable…
This paper presents a novel soft robotic system for a deformable mannequin that can be employed to physically realize the 3D geometry of different human bodies. The soft membrane on a mannequin is deformed by inflating several curved…
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…
Direct design of a robot's rendered dynamics, such as in impedance control, is now a well-established control mode in uncertain environments. When the physical interaction port variables are not measured directly, dynamic and kinematic…
Reinforcement learning (RL) enables robots to learn skills from interactions with the real world. In practice, the unstructured step-based exploration used in Deep RL -- often very successful in simulation -- leads to jerky motion patterns…
This work presents a convex-optimization-based framework for analysis and control of nonlinear partial differential equations. The approach uses a particular weak embedding of the nonlinear PDE, resulting in a linear equation in the space…
Purpose of Review: This review provides an overview of the state of the art in bioinspired soft robotics with by examining advancements in actuation, functionality, modeling, and control. Recent Findings: Recent research into actuation…
Continuum arms, such as trunk and tentacle robots, lie between the two extremities of rigid and soft robots and promise to capture the best of both worlds in terms of manipulability, dexterity, and compliance. This paper proposes a new…
Soft robots are increasingly used in healthcare, especially for assistive care, due to their inherent safety and adaptability. Controlling soft robots is challenging due to their nonlinear dynamics and the presence of time delays,…
This paper introduces a manipulation framework for the elastic rod, including shape representation, sensorimotor-model estimation, and shape controller. Until now, the manipulation of the elastic rod has faced several challenges: 1) shape…
We propose a finite element method for simulating one-dimensional solid models moving and experiencing large deformations while immersed in generalized Newtonian fluids. The method is oriented towards applications involving microscopic…
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…
This paper presents design and control innovations of wearable robots that tackle two barriers to widespread adoption of powered exoskeletons, namely restriction of human movement and versatile control of wearable co-robot systems. First,…
Soft robotics have gained increased attention from the robotic community due to their unique features such as compliance and human safety. Impressive amount of soft robotic prototypes have shown their superior performance over their rigid…
Continuum robots possess high flexibility and redundancy, making them well suited for safe interaction in complex environments, yet their continuous deformation and nonlinear dynamics pose fundamental challenges to perception, modeling, and…
Soft robots are intrinsically capable of adapting to different environments by changing their shape in response to interaction forces with the environment. However, sensing and feedback are still required for higher level decisions and…
For the quite extensively developed PDE backstepping methodology for coupled linear hyperbolic PDEs, we provide a generalization from finite collections of such PDEs, whose states at each location in space are vector-valued, to previously…