Related papers: Proprioceptive Sensing of Soft Tentacles with Mode…

Tactile perception using vibration sensation helps robots recognize their environment's physical properties and perform complex tasks. A sliding motion is applied to target objects to generate tactile vibration data. However, situations…

Robotics and automation are key enablers to increase throughput in ongoing conservation efforts across various threatened ecosystems. Cataloguing, digitisation, husbandry, and similar activities require the ability to interact with…

Research on the co-optimization of soft robotic design and control requires rapid means for real-world validation. Existing creation pipelines do not allow for the swift prototyping of soft robots to quickly test various design…

Robots play a critical role as the physical agent of human operators in exploring the ocean. However, it remains challenging to grasp objects reliably while fully submerging under a highly pressurized aquatic environment with little visible…

Hardness is among the most important attributes of an object that humans learn about through touch. However, approaches for robots to estimate hardness are limited, due to the lack of information provided by current tactile sensors. In this…

Grasping objects whose physical properties are unknown is still a great challenge in robotics. Most solutions rely entirely on visual data to plan the best grasping strategy. However, to match human abilities and be able to reliably pick…

We develop a real-time state estimation system to recover the pose and contact formation of an object relative to its environment. In this paper, we focus on the application of inserting an object picked by a suction cup into a tight space,…

Accurate state estimation for flexible robotic systems poses significant challenges, particularly for platforms with dynamically deforming structures that invalidate rigid-body assumptions. This paper addresses this problem and enables the…

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT)-based tactile sensors offer cost-effective and scalable solutions for robotic sensing, especially promising for soft robots. However a major issue of EIT-based tactile sensors when applied in highly…

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…

When navigating and interacting in challenging environments where sensory information is imperfect and incomplete, robots must make decisions that account for these shortcomings. We propose a novel method for quantifying and representing…

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 article describes a new way of controlling robots using soft tactile sensors: pose-based tactile servo (PBTS) control. The basic idea is to embed a tactile perception model for estimating the sensor pose within a servo control loop…

Accurately reconstructing and forecasting ocean fields from sparse observations is critical for both operational and scientific purposes. Optimizing sensor placement to maximize reconstruction skill remains challenging due to evolving ocean…

Pneumatically operated soft growing robots that extend via tip eversion are well-suited for navigation in confined spaces. Adding the ability to interact with the environment using sensors and tools attached to the robot tip would greatly…

Autonomous ocean-exploring vehicles have begun to take advantage of onboard sensor measurements of water properties such as salinity and temperature to locate oceanic features in real time. Such targeted sampling strategies enable more…

State estimation is one of the fundamental problems in robotics. For soft continuum robots, this task is particularly challenging because their states (poses, strains, internal wrenches, and velocities) are inherently infinite-dimensional…

Recently, a new underwater imaging formation model presented that the coefficients related to the direct and backscatter transmission signals are dependent on the type of water, camera specifications, water depth, and imaging range. This…

We present NeckSense, a novel wearable system for head pose tracking that leverages multi-channel bio-impedance sensing with soft, dry electrodes embedded in a lightweight, necklace-style form factor. NeckSense captures dynamic changes in…

Muddy terrains present significant challenges for terrestrial robots, as subtle changes in composition and water content can lead to large variations in substrate strength and force responses, causing the robot to slip or get stuck. This…