Related papers: The Robustness of Tether Friction in Non-idealized…

Collaborative aerial transportation of tethered payloads is fundamentally limited by space, power, and weight constraints. Conventional approaches rely on static equilibrium conditions, where each vehicle tilts to generate the forces that…

In many robotic systems, the holding state consumes power, limits operating time, and increases operating costs. Electrostatic clutches have the potential to improve robotic performance by generating holding torques with low power…

Inflatable structures used in soft robotics applications exhibit unique characteristics. In particular, the tip-extension structure, which grows from the tip, can grow without friction against the environment. However, these inflatable…

Incremental stiffness characterizes the variation of a material's force response to a small deformation change. Typically materials have an incremental stiffness that is fixed and positive, but recent technologies, such as super-lenses, low…

The potential diagnostic applications of magnet-actuated capsules have been greatly increased in recent years. For most of these potential applications, accurate position control of the capsule have been highly demanding. However, the…

This work tries to contribute to the design of legged robots with capabilities boosted through thruster-assisted locomotion. Our long-term goal is the development of robots capable of negotiating unstructured environments, including land…

Soft robots have attracted much attention in recent years owing to their high adaptability. Long articulated soft robots enable diverse operations, and tip-extending robots that navigate their environment through growth are highly effective…

This work establishes a solution to the problem of assessing the capacity of multi-object assemblies to withstand external forces without becoming unstable. Our physically-grounded approach handles arbitrary structures made from rigid…

Despite major advancements in control design that are robust to unplanned disturbances, bipedal robots are still susceptible to falling over and struggle to negotiate rough terrains. By utilizing thrusters in our bipedal robot, we can…

Rapid aerial grasping through robots can lead to many applications that utilize fast and dynamic picking and placing of objects. Rigid grippers traditionally used in aerial manipulators require high precision and specific object geometries…

The need for contact-rich tasks is rapidly growing in modern manufacturing settings. However, few traditional robotic assembly skills consider environmental constraints during task execution, and most of them use these constraints as…

Most engineered pilings require substantially more force to be driven into the ground than they can resist during extraction. This requires relatively heavy equipment for insertion, which is problematic for anchoring in hard-to-access…

Unknown dynamic load carrying is one important practical application for quadruped robots. Such a problem is non-trivial, posing three major challenges in quadruped locomotion control. First, how to model or represent the dynamics of the…

Soft robots have the ability to adapt to their environment, which makes them suitable for use in disaster areas and agricultural fields, where their mobility is constrained by complex terrain. One of the main challenges in developing soft…

One of the trendsetting themes in soft robotics has been the goal of developing the ultimate universal soft robotic gripper. One that is capable of manipulating items of various shapes, sizes, thicknesses, textures, and weights. All the…

Past planetary missions have been broad and detailed for Gas Giants, compared to flyby missions for Ice Giants. Presently, a mission to Neptune using electrodynamic tethers is under consideration due to the ability of tethers to provide…

This work focuses on the study of tethered fights of a micro quadcopter, with the aim of supplying continuous power to a small-sized aerial robot. Multiple features for facilitating the interaction between a tethered micro quadcopter and a…

Topology optimization is an important basis for the design of components. Here, the optimal structure is found within a design space subject to boundary conditions. Thereby, the specific material law has a strong impact on the final design.…

With the potential applications of capsule robots in medical endoscopy, accurate dynamic control of the capsule robot is becoming more and more important. In the scale of a capsule robot, the friction between capsule and the environment…

In this paper, a flexible tether-net system is applied to capture the space debris and a numerical framework is established to explore its nonlinear dynamic behaviors, which comprises four principal phases: folding, spreading, contacting,…