Related papers: Proprioceptive Sensing of Soft Tentacles with Mode…
Soft robots have become increasingly popular for complex manipulation tasks requiring gentle and safe contact. However, their softness makes accurate control challenging, and high-fidelity sensing is a prerequisite to adequate control…
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…
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…
Being aware of our body has great importance in our everyday life. This is the reason why we know how to move in a dark room or to grasp a complex object. These skills are important for robots as well, however, robotic bodily awareness is…
We propose a deep visuo-tactile model for realtime estimation of the liquid inside a deformable container in a proprioceptive way.We fuse two sensory modalities, i.e., the raw visual inputs from the RGB camera and the tactile cues from our…
Soft robotic systems offer benefits over traditional rigid systems through reduced contact trauma with soft tissues and by enabling access through tortuous paths in minimally invasive surgery. However, the inherent deformability of soft…
The use of soft robotics for real-world underwater applications is limited, even more than in terrestrial applications, by the ability to accurately measure and control the deformation of the soft materials in real time without the need for…
Fluid-filled soft visuotactile sensors such as the Soft-bubbles alleviate key challenges for robust manipulation, as they enable reliable grasps along with the ability to obtain high-resolution sensory feedback on contact geometry and…
State estimation from measured data is crucial for robotic applications as autonomous systems rely on sensors to capture the motion and localize in the 3D world. Among sensors that are designed for measuring a robot's pose, or for soft…
The precise control of soft and continuum robots requires knowledge of their shape, which has, in contrast to classical rigid robots, infinite degrees of freedom. To partially reconstruct the shape, proprioceptive techniques use built-in…
We present a tactile sensing method enabled by the mechanical compliance of soft robots; an externally attachable photoreflective module reads surface deformation of silicone skin to estimate contact force without embedding tactile…
Robotic manipulation has made significant advancements, with systems demonstrating high precision and repeatability. However, this remarkable precision often fails to translate into efficient manipulation of thin deformable objects. Current…
This paper presents a novel framework to realize proprioception and closed-loop control for soft manipulators. Deformations with large elongation and large bending can be precisely predicted using geometry-based sensor signals obtained from…
Discrete simulation methods are efficient tools to investigate the complex behaviors of complex fluids made of either dry granular materials or dilute suspensions. By contrast, materials made of soft and/or concentrated units (emulsions,…
Due to their ability to move without sliding relative to their environment, soft growing robots are attractive for deploying distributed sensor networks in confined spaces. Sensing of the state of such robots would also add to their…
Passive deformation due to compliance is a commonly used benefit of soft robots, providing opportunities to achieve robust actuation with few active degrees of freedom. Soft growing robots in particular have shown promise in navigation of…
This paper presents a learned model to predict the robot-centric velocity of an underwater robot through dynamics-aware proprioception. The method exploits a recurrent neural network using as inputs inertial cues, motor commands, and…
The technological transition from soft machines to soft robots necessarily passes through the integration of soft electronics and sensors. This allows for the establishment of feedback control systems while preserving the softness of the…
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…
Inspired by the octopus and other animals living in water, soft robots should naturally lend themselves to underwater operations, as supported by encouraging validations in deep water scenarios. This work deals with equipping soft arms with…