Related papers: Topology optimization of locomoting soft bodies us…
This paper presents a topology optimization approach for surface flows, which can represent the viscous and incompressible fluidic motions at the solid/liquid and liquid/vapor interfaces. The fluidic motions on such material interfaces can…
Topology optimization (TopOpt) is a mathematical-driven design procedure to realize optimal material architectures. This procedure is often used to automate the design of devices involving flow through porous media, such as micro-fluidic…
Topology optimization of natural convection problems is computationally expensive, due to the large number of degrees of freedom (DOFs) in the model and its two-way coupled nature. Herein, a method is presented to reduce the computational…
Geometric motion planning offers effective and interpretable gait analysis and optimization tools for locomoting systems. However, due to the curse of dimensionality in coordinate optimization, a key component of geometric motion planning,…
Soft robots have gained significant attention due to their flexibility and safety, particularly in human-centric applications. The co-design of structure and controller in soft robotics has presented a longstanding challenge owing to the…
We present parametric trajectory optimization, a method for simultaneously computing physical parameters, actuation requirements, and robot motions for more efficient robot designs. In this scheme, robot dimensions, masses, and other…
Soft robots are made of compliant materials that perform their tasks by deriving motion from elastic deformations. They are used in various applications, e.g., for handling fragile objects, navigating sensitive/complex environments, etc.,…
Robotic manipulation of deformable objects remains a challenging task. One such task is folding a garment autonomously. Given start and end folding positions, what is an optimal trajectory to move the robotic arm to fold a garment? Certain…
Soft robotic grasping has rapidly spread through the academic robotics community in recent years and pushed into industrial applications. At the same time, multimaterial 3D printing has become widely available, enabling the monolithic…
We propose a solution strategy for a multimaterial minimum compliance topology optimization problem, which consists in finding the optimal allocation of a finite number of candidate (possibly anisotropic) materials inside a reference…
Topology optimization under uncertainty or reliability-based topology optimization is usually numerically very expensive. This is mainly due to the fact that an accurate evaluation of the probabilistic model requires the system to be…
Daily tasks require us to use our whole body to manipulate objects, for instance when our hands are unavailable. We consider the issue of providing humanoid robots with the ability to autonomously perform similar whole-body manipulation…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are no good dynamic simulation tools to predict the motion or performance of a microrobot as it moves against a substrate. At…
Accurate deformable object manipulation (DOM) is essential for achieving autonomy in robotic surgery, where soft tissues are being displaced, stretched, and dissected. Many DOM methods can be powered by simulation, which ensures realistic…
This paper presents a method for the optimization of multi-component structures comprised of two and three materials considering large motion sliding contact and separation along interfaces. The structural geometry is defined by an explicit…
We study the problem of moving a vertex in an unstructured mesh of triangular, quadrilateral, or tetrahedral elements to optimize the shapes of adjacent elements. We show that many such problems can be solved in linear time using…
We study motion planning algorithms for collision free control of multiple objects in the presence of moving obstacles. We compute the topological complexity of algorithms solving this problem. We apply topological tools and use information…
In this paper, we present a topology optimization (TO) framework to enable automated design of mechanical components while ensuring the result can be manufactured using multi-axis machining. Although TO improves the part's performance, the…
Topology optimization problems often support multiple local minima due to a lack of convexity. Typically, gradient-based techniques combined with continuation in model parameters are used to promote convergence to more optimal solutions;…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are few dynamic simulation tools available to accurately predict the motion or performance of untethered microrobots as they…