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Multisection continuum arms offer complementary characteristics to those of traditional rigid-bodied robots. Inspired by biological appendages, such as elephant trunks and octopus arms, these robots trade rigidity for compliance, accuracy…
Torque and continuous rotation are fundamental methods of actuation and manipulation in rigid robots. Soft robot arms use soft materials and structures to mimic the passive compliance of biological arms that bend and extend. This use of…
Quadruped robots are usually equipped with additional arms for manipulation, negatively impacting price and weight. On the other hand, the requirements of legged locomotion mean that the legs of such robots often possess the needed torque…
Wearable assistive robots (WR) for the lower extremity are extensively documented in literature. Various interfaces have been designed to control these devices during gait and balance activities. However, achieving seamless and intuitive…
Human limb motion tracking and recognition plays an important role in medical rehabilitation training, lower limb assistance, prosthetics design for amputees, feedback control for assistive robots, etc. Lightweight wearable sensors,…
The deployment of complex soft robots in multiphysics environments requires advanced simulation frameworks that not only capture interactions between different types of material, but also translate accurately to real-world performance. Soft…
This article proposes a mobile quad-arm robot: ARMS, which unifies wheeled-legged tripedal locomotion, wheeled locomotion, and quad-arm loco-manipulation. ARMS's four arms have different mechanisms and are partially designed to be…
Particle robots are novel biologically-inspired robotic systems where locomotion can be achieved collectively and robustly, but not independently. While its control is currently limited to a hand-crafted policy for basic locomotion tasks,…
Robotic systems driven by artificial muscles present unique challenges due to the nonlinear dynamics of actuators and the complex designs of mechanical structures. Traditional model-based controllers often struggle to achieve desired…
Force control in hydraulic actuators is notoriously difficult due to strong nonlinearities, uncertainties, and the high risks associated with unsafe exploration during learning. This paper investigates safe reinforcement learning (RL) for…
Soft robots have immense potential given their inherent safety and adaptability, but challenges in soft actuator forces and design constraints have limited scaling up soft robots to larger sizes. Electrothermal shape memory alloy (SMA)…
Soft robotic manipulators are attractive for a range of applications such as medical interventions or industrial inspections in confined environments. A myriad of soft robotic manipulators have been proposed in the literature, but their…
Legged robots constructed from soft materials are commonly claimed to demonstrate safer, more robust environmental interactions than their rigid counterparts. However, this motivating feature of soft robots requires more rigorous…
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…
The flexible under-actuated musculoskeletal hand is superior in its adaptability and impact resistance. On the other hand, since the relationship between sensors and actuators cannot be uniquely determined, almost all its controls are based…
Safe yet stable grasping requires a robotic hand to apply sufficient force on the object to immobilize it while keeping it from getting damaged. Soft robotic hands have been proposed for safe grasping due to their passive compliance, but…
Muscles of the human body are composed of tiny actuators made up of myosin and actin filaments. They can exert force in various shapes such as curved or flat, under contact forces and deformations from the environment. On the other hand,…
Mobile Manipulation (MM) systems are ideal candidates for taking up the role of a personal assistant in unstructured real-world environments. Among other challenges, MM requires effective coordination of the robot's embodiments for…
Wearable robotics have the capacity to assist stroke survivors in assisting and rehabilitating hand function. Many devices that use surface electromyographic (sEMG) for control rely on extrinsic muscle signals, since sEMG sensors are…
Recently, many humanoid robots have been increasingly deployed in various facilities, including hospitals and assisted living environments, where they are often remotely controlled by human operators. Their kinematic redundancy enhances…