Related papers: Collective control of modular soft robots via embo…
Modularity in robotics holds great potential. In principle, modular robots can be disassembled and reassembled in different robots, and possibly perform new tasks. Nevertheless, actually exploiting modularity is yet an unsolved problem:…
Voxel-based soft robots (VSRs) are aggregations of soft blocks whose design is amenable to optimization. We here present a software, 2D-VSR-Sim, for facilitating research concerning the optimization of VSRs body and brain. The software,…
This paper describes the control, and evaluation of a new human-scaled biped robot with liquid cooled viscoelastic actuators (VLCA). Based on the lessons learned from previous work from our team on VLCA [1], we present a new system design…
In this paper a new method called SCLA which stands for Spiking based Cellular Learning Automata is proposed for a mobile robot to get to the target from any random initial point. The proposed method is a result of the integration of both…
Recently, researchers have explored control methods that embrace nonlinear dynamic coupling instead of suppressing it. Such designs leverage dynamical coupling for communication between different parts of the robot. Morphological…
This paper presents a rotation-invariant embedded platform for simulating (neural) cellular automata (NCA) in modular robotic systems. Inspired by previous work on physical NCA, we introduce key innovations that overcome limitations in…
The work presented here is a novel biological approach for the compliant control of a robotic arm in real time (RT). We integrate a spiking cerebellar network at the core of a feedback control loop performing torque-driven control. The…
Neural Cellular Automata (NCA) represent a powerful framework for modeling biological self-organization, extending classical rule-based systems with trainable, differentiable (or evolvable) update rules that capture the adaptive…
Fluidically actuated soft robots have promising capabilities such as inherent compliance and user safety. The control of soft robots needs to properly handle nonlinear actuation dynamics, motion constraints, workspace limitations, and…
In Distributed Manipulator Systems (DMS), decentralization is a highly desirable property as it promotes robustness and facilitates scalability by distributing computational burden and eliminating singular points of failure. However,…
This paper presents a multimodal control framework based on spiking neural networks (SNNs) for robotic arms aboard space stations. It is designed to cope with the constraints of limited onboard resources while enabling autonomous…
Neuromorphic computing is a new paradigm for design of both the computing hardware and algorithms inspired by biological neural networks. The event-based nature and the inherent parallelism make neuromorphic computing a promising paradigm…
Compliant robots can be more versatile than traditional robots, but their control is more complex. The dynamics of compliant bodies can however be turned into an advantage using the physical reservoir computing frame-work. By feeding sensor…
In recent years the functionality of synthetic active microparticles has edged even closer to that of their biological counterparts. However, we still lack the understanding needed to recreate at the microscale key features of autonomous…
Efficient and robust control using spiking neural networks (SNNs) is still an open problem. Whilst behaviour of biological agents is produced through sparse and irregular spiking patterns, which provide both robust and efficient control,…
Recent advances in embodied intelligence have leveraged massive scaling of data and model parameters to master natural-language command following and multi-task control. In contrast, biological systems demonstrate an innate ability to…
The Synthetic Nervous System (SNS) is a biologically inspired neural network (NN). Due to its capability of capturing complex mechanisms underlying neural computation, an SNS model is a candidate for building compact and interpretable NN…
In brain-machine interface (BMI) applications, a key challenge is the low information content and high noise level in neural signals, severely affecting stable robotic control. To address this challenge, we proposes a cooperative shared…
In this work, a spiking neural network (SNN) is proposed for approximating differential sensorimotor maps of robotic systems. The computed model is used as a local Jacobian-like projection that relates changes in sensor space to changes in…
This work addresses open-loop control of a soft continuum robot (SCR) from video-learned latent dynamics. Visual Oscillator Networks (VONs) from previous work are used, that provide mechanistically interpretable 2D oscillator latents…