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Mechanical compliance is a key design parameter for dynamic contact-rich manipulation, affecting task success and safety robustness over contact geometry variation. Design of soft robotic structures, such as compliant fingers, requires…

Microorganisms such as algae and bacteria move in a viscous environment with extremely low Reynolds ($Re$), where the viscous drag dominates the inertial forces. They have adapted to this environment by developing specialized features such…

A bio-inspired, passively deployable flap attached to an airfoil by a torsional spring of fixed stiffness can provide significant lift improvements at post-stall angles of attack. In this work, we describe a hybrid active-passive variant to…

Musculoskeletal robots provide superior advantages in flexibility and dexterity, positioning them as a promising frontier towards embodied intelligence. However, current research is largely confined to relative simple tasks, restricting the…

We present a closed-form optimal feedback control method that ensures safety in an a prior unknown and potentially dynamic environment. This article considers the scenario where local perception data (e.g., LiDAR) is obtained periodically,…

Until recently, the concept of soft robot safety was an informal notion, often attributed solely to the fact that soft robots are less likely to damage their operating environment than rigid robots. As the field moves toward feedback…

Miniature locomotion robots with the ability to navigate confined environments show great promise for a wide range of tasks, including search and rescue operations. Soft miniature locomotion robots, as a burgeoning field, have attracted…

Soft robots have the ability to adapt to their environment, which makes them suitable for use in disaster areas and agricultural fields, where their mobility is constrained by complex terrain. One of the main challenges in developing soft…

Over the past few decades, biomimetic robotic experiments have significantly advanced our understanding of undulatory swimming. Compared to animal experiments, robotic experiments offer repeatability and controlled parameter variations, but…

Exploring bodies of water on their surface allows robots to efficiently communicate and harvest energy from the sun. On the water surface, however, robots often face highly unstructured environments, cluttered with plant matter, animals,…

We present new constrained and free-swimming experiments and simulations of a pair of pitching hydrofoils interacting in a minimal school. The hydrofoils have an out-of-phase synchronization and they are varied through in-line, staggered,…

Magnetic soft continuum robots are capable of bending with remote control in confined space environments, and they have been applied in various bioengineering contexts. As one type of ferromagnetic soft continuums, the Magnetically Induced…

With soft robotics being increasingly employed in settings demanding high and controlled contact forces, recent research has demonstrated the use of soft robots to estimate or intrinsically sense forces without requiring external sensing…

Sim-to-real transfer remains a significant challenge in soft robotics due to the unpredictability introduced by common manufacturing processes such as 3D printing and molding. These processes often result in deviations from simulated…

Developing soft robots that can control their own life-cycle and degrade on-demand while maintaining hyper-elasticity is a significant research challenge. On-demand degradable soft robots, which conserve their original functionality during…

Continuum robots with variable compliance have gained significant attention due to their adaptability in unstructured environments. Among various stiffness modulation techniques, layer jamming (LJ) provides a simple yet effective approach…

Using a flapping robot in a wind tunnel, we show that flapping faster amplifies existing longitudinal static stability (focusing on the pitch stiffness) and can even make an unstable flier stable. We show that stability for a flapper is not…

Untethered soft robots are essential for advancing the real-world deployment of soft robotic systems in diverse and multitasking environments. Inspired by soft-bodied inchworm, we present a fully untethered soft robot with a curved,…

Bioinspired flexible blades have been recently shown to significantly improve the versatility of horizontal-axis wind turbines, by widening their working range and increasing their efficiency. The aerodynamic and centrifugal forces bend the…

Ensuring symmetric stiffness in impedance-controlled robots is crucial for physically meaningful and stable interaction in contact-rich manipulation. Conventional approaches neglect the change of basis vectors in curved spaces, leading to…