Related papers: Development of a Modular and Submersible Soft Robo…

Collocated tactile sensing is a fundamental enabling technology for dexterous manipulation. However, deformable sensors introduce complex dynamics between the robot, grasped object, and environment that must be considered for fine…

Compared to traditional rigid robotics, soft robotics has attracted increasing attention due to its advantages as compliance, safety, and low cost. As an essential part of soft robotics, the soft robotic gripper also shows its superior…

Movement disorders impact muscle strength and mobility, and despite therapeutic efforts, many people with movement disorders have challenges functioning independently. Soft wearable robots, or exosuits, offer a promising solution for…

Morphological regeneration is an important feature that highlights the environmental adaptive capacity of biological systems. Lack of this regenerative capacity significantly limits the resilience of machines and the environments they can…

Traditional rigid underwater vehicles pose risks to delicate marine ecosystems due to high-speed propellers and rigid hulls. This paper presents BactoBot, a low-cost, soft underwater robot designed for safe and gentle marine exploration.…

Sensory feedback is essential for the control of soft robotic systems and to enable deployment in a variety of different tasks. Proprioception refers to sensing the robot's own state and is of crucial importance in order to deploy soft…

Recent trends in robot arm control have seen a shift towards end-to-end solutions, using deep reinforcement learning to learn a controller directly from raw sensor data, rather than relying on a hand-crafted, modular pipeline. However, the…

Evolutionary algorithms offer great promise for the automatic design of robot bodies, tailoring them to specific environments or tasks. Most research is done on simplified models or virtual robots in physics simulators, which do not capture…

The manual design of soft robots and their controllers is notoriously challenging, but it could be augmented---or, in some cases, entirely replaced---by automated design tools. Machine learning algorithms can automatically propose, test,…

Developing new functionality for underwater robots and testing them in the real world is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Simulation environments allow for rapid testing before field deployment. However, existing tools lack certain…

Complex and even chaotic dynamics, though prevalent in many natural and engineered systems, has been largely avoided in the design of electromechanical systems due to concerns about wear and controlability. Here, we demonstrate that complex…

Soft robots are inherently compliant and have a strong potential to realize human-friendly and safe robots. Despite continued research highlighting the potential of soft robots, they remain largely confined to laboratory settings. In this…

Soft grippers, for stable grasping of objects, with high compliance could be considered a suitable candidate for replacement of conventional rigid grippers, and in recent years, they have been emerging exponentially in industries. Not only…

Soft robots have drawn significant attention recently for their ability to achieve rich shapes when interacting with complex environments. However, their elasticity and flexibility compared to rigid robots also pose significant challenges…

Soft robotics holds tremendous potential for various applications, especially in unstructured environments such as search and rescue operations. However, the lack of autonomy and teleoperability, limited capabilities, absence of gait…

Operating robots precisely and at high speeds has been a long-standing goal of robotics research. Balancing these competing demands is key to enabling the seamless collaboration of robots and humans and increasing task performance. However,…

The controlled actuation of hydraulic and pneumatic actuators has unveiled fresh and thrilling opportunities for designing mobile robots with adaptable structures. Previously reported rolling robots, which were powered by fluidic systems,…

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…

The human brain's plasticity allows for the integration of artificial body parts into the human body. Leveraging this, embodied systems realize intuitive interactions with the environment. We introduce a novel concept: embodied swarm…

Soft robots manufactured with flexible materials can be highly compliant and adaptive to their surroundings, which facilitates their application in areas such as dexterous manipulation and environmental exploration. This paper aims at…