Related papers: Safe Balancing Control of a Soft Legged Robot
Although soft robots show safer interactions with their environment than traditional robots, soft mechanisms and actuators still have significant potential for damage or degradation particularly during unmodeled contact. This article…
Robots built from soft materials will inherently apply lower environmental forces than their rigid counterparts, and therefore may be more suitable in sensitive settings with unintended contact. However, these robots' applied forces result…
Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…
Control of soft robotic manipulators remains a challenge for designs with advanced capabilities and novel actuation. Two significant limitations are multi-axis, three-dimensional motion of soft bodies alongside actuator dynamics and…
Robots built from soft materials can alter their shape and size in a particular profile. This shape-changing ability could be extremely helpful for rescue robots and those operating in unknown terrains and environments. In changing shape,…
Soft Robots distinguish themselves from traditional robots by embracing flexible kinematics. Because of their recent emergence, there exist numerous uncharted territories, including novel actuators, manufacturing processes, and advanced…
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 pneumatic legged robots show promise in their ability to traverse a range of different types of terrain, including natural unstructured terrain met in applications like precision agriculture. They can adapt their body morphology to the…
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
Living organisms intertwine soft (e.g., muscle) and hard (e.g., bones) materials, giving them an intrinsic flexibility and resiliency often lacking in conventional rigid robots. The emerging field of soft robotics seeks to harness these…
Robust closed-loop locomotion remains challenging for soft quadruped robots due to high-dimensional dynamics, actuator hysteresis, and difficult-to-model contact interactions, while conventional proprioception provides limited information…
Legged locomotion is a highly promising but under-researched subfield within the field of soft robotics. The compliant limbs of soft-limbed robots offer numerous benefits, including the ability to regulate impacts, tolerate falls, and…
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 robotics focuses on designing robots with highly deformable materials, allowing them to adapt and operate safely and reliably in unstructured and variable environments. While soft robots offer increased compliance over rigid body…
Rigid-bodied robots often lack compliance needed to adapt to unstructured environments, while fully soft robots, though highly adaptable, struggle with scalability and load capacity. In nature, musculoskeletal systems balance strength and…
Soft robots have been leveraged in considerable areas like surgery, rehabilitation, and bionics due to their softness, flexibility, and safety. However, it is challenging to produce two same soft robots even with the same mold and…
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…
Soft robots have the potential to revolutionize the use of robotic systems with their capability of establishing safe, robust, and adaptable interactions with their environment, but their precise control remains challenging. In contrast,…
Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…
Soft robotics has advanced rapidly, yet its control methods remain fragmented: different morphologies and actuation schemes still require task-specific controllers, hindering theoretical integration and large-scale deployment. A generic…