Related papers: SLUGBOT, an Aplysia-inspired Robotic Grasper for S…
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…
In this paper, considering a braided continuum soft-robot, whose radial deformation is constrained but elongation is assumed, a quasi-Lagrangian model is proposed that meets the Lagrangian models properties, including a well-posed input…
Biomimetic intelligence and robotics are transforming field ecology by enabling lifelike robotic surrogates that interact naturally with animals under real world conditions. Studying avian behavior in the wild remains challenging due to the…
Assistive robots have attracted significant attention due to their potential to enhance the quality of life for vulnerable individuals like the elderly. The convergence of computer vision, large language models, and robotics has introduced…
Humanoid robots that can autonomously operate in diverse environments have the potential to help address labour shortages in factories, assist elderly at homes, and colonize new planets. While classical controllers for humanoid robots have…
Scrubbing surfaces is a physically demanding and time-intensive task. Removing adhered contamination requires substantial friction generated through pressure and torque or high lateral forces. Rigid robotic manipulators, while capable of…
Humans naturally grasp objects with minimal level required force for stability, whereas robots often rely on rigid, over-squeezing control. To narrow this gap, we propose a human-inspired physics-conditioned tactile method (Phy-Tac) for…
All vertebrates are capable of performing various types of physical activity. Locomotor patterns are created by the cyclical coordinated work of the skeletal muscles. The organization of such a system in living organisms is responsible for…
Grip, walk, crawl, and jump. Soft robots are integrated functional structures composed of compliant mechanisms, whose activity spans various industrial applications such as surgery, healthcare, surveillance, and even planetary exploration.…
Ensuring safe and comfortable bite transfer during robot-assisted feeding is challenging due to the close physical human-robot interaction required. This paper presents a novel approach to modeling physical human-robot interaction in a…
A generic data-assisted control architecture within the port-Hamiltonian framework is proposed, introducing a physically meaningful observable that links conservative dynamics to all actuation, dissipation, and disturbance channels. A…
The impressive capabilities of humans to robustly perform manipulation relies on compliant interactions, enabled through the structure and materials spatially distributed in our hands. We propose by mimicking this distributed compliance in…
This work provides a complete framework for the simulation, co-optimization, and sim-to-real transfer of the design and control of soft legged robots. The compliance of soft robots provides a form of "mechanical intelligence" -- the ability…
In this paper, we explore whether a robot can learn to regrasp a diverse set of objects to achieve various desired grasp poses. Regrasping is needed whenever a robot's current grasp pose fails to perform desired manipulation tasks. Endowing…
We present a self-contained, soft robotic hand composed of soft pneumatic actuator modules that are equipped with strain and pressure sensing. We show how this data can be used to discern whether a grasp was successful. Co-locating sensing…
The emergence of 3D Gaussian Splatting for fast and high-quality novel view synthesize has opened up the possibility to construct photo-realistic simulations from video for robotic reinforcement learning. While the approach has been…
In biological systems, both skin sensitivity and body flexibility play crucial roles in haptic perception. Fully soft robots often suffer from structural fragility and delayed sensory processing, limiting their practical functionality. The…
Soft robotics has opened a unique path to flexibility and environmental adaptability, learning from nature and reproducing biological behaviors. Nature implies answers for how to apply robots to real life. To find out how we learn from…
Strain sensors are gaining popularity in soft robotics for acquiring tactile data due to their flexibility and ease of integration. Tactile sensing plays a critical role in soft grippers, enabling them to safely interact with unstructured…
We present CloudGripper, an open source cloud robotics testbed, consisting of a scalable, space and cost-efficient design constructed as a rack of 32 small robot arm work cells. Each robot work cell is fully enclosed and features individual…