Related papers: Energy-efficient tunable-stiffness soft robots usi…
Inflated continuum robots are promising for a variety of navigation tasks, but controlling their motion with a small number of actuators is challenging. These inflated beam robots tend to buckle under compressive loads, producing extremely…
We design and test an octopus-inspired flexible hull robot that demonstrates outstanding fast-starting performance. The robot is hyper-inflated with water, and then rapidly deflates to expel the fluid so as to power the escape maneuver.…
We describe size-varying cylindrical particles made from silicone elastomers that can serve as building blocks for robotic granular materials. The particle size variation, which is achieved by inflation, gives rise to changes in stiffness…
The current study presents a systematic investigation of the locomotion performance of a swimmer with a wide range of parameter settings. Two-dimensional simulations with the immersed boundary method are employed for the fluid-structure…
Although research studies in pneumatic soft robots develop rapidly, most pneumatic actuators are still controlled by rigid valves and conventional electronics. The existence of these rigid, electronic components sacrifices the compliance…
Soft robots have a myriad of potentials because of their intrinsically compliant bodies, enabling safe interactions with humans and adaptability to unpredictable environments. However, most of them have limited actuation speeds, require…
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…
Swimming microrobots are increasingly developed with complex materials and dynamic shapes and are expected to operate in complex environments in which the system dynamics are difficult to model and positional control of the microrobot is…
Deformable robots are notoriously difficult to model or control due to its high-dimensional configuration spaces. Direct trajectory optimization suffers from the curse-of-dimensionality and incurs a high computational cost, while…
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…
Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…
Soft robots offer more flexibility, compliance, and adaptability than traditional rigid robots. They are also typically lighter and cheaper to manufacture. However, their use in real-world applications is limited due to modeling challenges…
In the fields of robotics and biomechanics, the integration of elastic elements such as springs and tendons in legged systems has long been recognized for enabling energy-efficient locomotion. Yet, a significant challenge persists:…
We use small-amplitude inviscid theory to study the swimming performance of a flexible flapping plate with time-varying flexibility. The stiffness of the plate oscillates at twice the frequency of the kinematics in order to maintain a…
Variable impedance control is advantageous for physical human-robot interaction to improve safety, adaptability and many other aspects. This paper presents a gain-scheduled variable stiffness control approach under strict frequency-domain…
We present an approach to overcoming challenges in dynamical dexterity for robots through tunable origami structures. Our work leverages a one-parameter family of flat sheet crease patterns that folds into origami bellows, whose axial…
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…
Bio-inspired soft robots have already shown the ability to handle uncertainty and adapt to unstructured environments. However, their availability is partially restricted by time-consuming, costly and highly supervised design-fabrication…
Soft robots are notoriously hard to control. This is partly due to the scarcity of models able to capture their complex continuum mechanics, resulting in a lack of control methodologies that take full advantage of body compliance. Currently…
In narrow, unstructured underwater environments such as environmental monitoring and minimally invasive medical procedures, micro soft robots exhibit unique advantages due to their flexible movement capabilities and small size. At the same…