Related papers: Electrostatic Brakes Enable Individual Joint Contr…
Robotic systems driven by conventional motors often suffer from challenges such as large mass, complex control algorithms, and the need for additional braking mechanisms, which limit their applications in lightweight and compact robotic…
Wearable and legged robot designers face multiple challenges when choosing actuation. Traditional fully actuated designs using electric motors are multifunctional but oversized and inefficient for bearing conservative loads and for being…
This paper present a novel dual-speed actuator adapted to robotics. In many applications, robots have to bear large loads while moving slowly and also have to move quickly through the air with almost no load. This lead to conflicting…
Collaborative robots must simultaneously be safe enough to operate in close proximity to human operators and powerful enough to assist users in industrial tasks such as lifting heavy equipment. The requirement for safety necessitates that…
Rigid robots can be precise in repetitive tasks, but struggle in unstructured environments. Nature's versatility in such environments inspires researchers to develop biomimetic robots that incorporate compliant and contracting artificial…
Series Elastic Actuators provide many benefits in force control of robots in unconstrained environments. These benefits include high force fidelity, extremely low impedance, low friction, and good force control bandwidth. Series Elastic…
Common disabilities like stroke and spinal cord injuries may cause loss of motor function in hands. They can be treated with robot assisted rehabilitation techniques, like continuously opening and closing the hand with help of a robot, in a…
Robotic legs have bimodal operations: swing phases when the leg needs to move quickly in the air (high-speed, low-force) and stance phases when the leg bears the weight of the system (low-speed, high-force). Sizing a traditional…
Intrinsically elastic robots surpass their rigid counterparts in a range of different characteristics. By temporarily storing potential energy and subsequently converting it to kinetic energy, elastic robots are capable of highly dynamic…
We present a new open-source torque-controlled legged robot system, with a low-cost and low-complexity actuator module at its core. It consists of a high-torque brushless DC motor and a low-gear-ratio transmission suitable for impedance and…
Humans possess a remarkable ability to react to unpredictable perturbations through immediate mechanical responses, which harness the visco-elastic properties of muscles to maintain balance. Inspired by this behaviour, we propose a novel…
Most traditional robotic mechanisms feature inelastic joints that are unable to robustly handle large deformations and off-axis moments. As a result, the applied loads are transferred rigidly throughout the entire structure. The…
Wearable robots are limited by their actuators performances because they must bear the weight of their own power system and energy source. This paper explores the idea of leveraging hybrid modes to meet multiple operating points with a…
Robotic systems with many degrees of freedom (DoF) are constrained by the demands of dedicating a motor to each joint, and while mechanical multiplexing reduces actuator count, existing clutch designs are bulky, force-limited, or restricted…
Electrostatic actuators provide a promising approach to creating soft robotic sheets, due to their flexible form factor, modular integration, and fast response speed. However, their control requires kilo-Volt signals and understanding of…
In this paper, we propose a novel design of an electrically actuated robotic leg, called the DecARt (Decoupled Actuation Robot) Leg, aimed at performing agile locomotion. This design incorporates several new features, such as the use of a…
Parallel-elastic joints can improve the efficiency and strength of robots by assisting the actuators with additional torques. For these benefits to be realized, a spring needs to be carefully designed. However, designing robots is an…
High-speed and high-acceleration movements are inherently hard to control. Applying learning to the control of such motions on anthropomorphic robot arms can improve the accuracy of the control but might damage the system. The inherent…
With a slender redundant body, the tendon-driven robot (TDR) has a large workspace and great maneuverability while working in complex environments. TDR comprises multiple independently controlled robot segments, each with a set of driving…
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,…