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Motion planning is a computationally intensive and well-studied problem in autonomous robots. However, motion planning hardware accelerators (MPA) must be soft-error resilient for deployment in safety-critical applications, and blanket…
Ergonomics and human comfort are essential concerns in physical human-robot interaction. Common practical methods in the area either fail in estimating the correct posture due to occlusion or suffer from inaccurate ergonomics models in…
With robots increasingly operating in human-centric environments, ensuring soft and safe physical interactions, whether with humans, surroundings, or other machines, is essential. While compliant hardware can facilitate such interactions,…
State estimation is one of the fundamental problems in robotics. For soft continuum robots, this task is particularly challenging because their states (poses, strains, internal wrenches, and velocities) are inherently infinite-dimensional…
State-of-the-art impact dynamics models either apply for free-flying objects or do not account that a robotic manipulator is commonly high-stiffness controlled. Thus, we lack tailor-made models for manipulators mounted on a fixed base.…
Soft robotic systems offer benefits over traditional rigid systems through reduced contact trauma with soft tissues and by enabling access through tortuous paths in minimally invasive surgery. However, the inherent deformability of soft…
Compared to conventional robots, flexible manipulators offer many advantages, such as faster end-effector velocities and less energy consumption. However, their flexible structure can lead to undesired oscillations. Therefore, the applied…
A novel multi-scale finite element formulation for contact mechanics between nominally smooth but microscopically rough surfaces is herein proposed. The approach integrates the interface finite element method (FEM) for modelling interface…
Rigid robots were extensively researched, whereas soft robotics remains an underexplored field. Utilizing soft-legged robots in performing tasks as a replacement for human beings is an important stride to take, especially under harsh and…
Soft robots are made of compliant materials and perform tasks that are challenging for rigid robots. However, their continuum nature makes it difficult to develop model-based control strategies. This work presents a robust model-based…
Continuum soft robots are mechanical systems entirely made of continuously deformable elements. This design solution aims to bring robots closer to invertebrate animals and soft appendices of vertebrate animals (e.g., an elephant's trunk, a…
Untethered soft robots that locomote using electrothermally-responsive materials like shape memory alloy (SMA) face challenging design constraints for sensing actuator states. At the same time, modeling of actuator behaviors faces steep…
The Finite Element Method (FEM) is a well-established procedure for computing approximate solutions to deterministic engineering problems described by partial differential equations. FEM produces discrete approximations of the solution with…
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…
This paper presents a computational model, based on the Finite Element Method (FEM), that simulates the thermal response of laser-irradiated tissue. This model addresses a gap in the current ecosystem of surgical robot simulators, which…
A new, and extremely fast, computational modeling paradigm is introduced here for specific finite elasticity problems that arise in the context of soft robotics. Whereas continuum mechanics is a very classical area of study, and significant…
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…
Many physical systems can be modelled as parameter-dependent variational problems. In numerous cases, multiple equilibria co-exist, requiring the evaluation of their stability, and the monitoring of transitions between them. Generally, the…
This paper investigates the influence of the internal geometrical structure of soft pneu-nets on the dynamic response and hysteresis of the actuators. The research findings indicate that by strategically manipulating the stress distribution…
Soft robots are typically approximated as low-dimensional systems, especially when learning-based methods are used. This leads to models that are limited in their capability to predict the large number of deformation modes and interactions…