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Soft pneumatic actuators (SPA) made from elastomeric materials can provide large strain and large force. The behavior of locally strain-restricted hyperelastic materials under inflation has been investigated thoroughly for shape…
Soft robots diverge from traditional rigid robotics, offering unique advantages in adaptability, safety, and human-robot interaction. In some cases, soft robots can be powered by biohybrid actuators and the design process of these systems…
Snapping instabilities in soft structures offer a powerful pathway to achieve rapid and energy-efficient actuation. In this study, an eccentric dome-shaped snapping actuator is developed to generate controllable asymmetric motion through…
Soft robots achieve functionality through tight coupling among geometry, material composition, and actuation. As a result, effective design optimization requires these three aspects to be considered jointly rather than in isolation. This…
We study the fatigue fracture of disordered materials by means of computer simulations of a discrete element model. We extend a two-dimensional fracture model to capture the microscopic mechanisms relevant for fatigue, and we simulate the…
Enabling dexterous manipulation and safe human-robot interaction, soft robots are widely used in numerous surgical applications. One of the complications associated with using soft robots in surgical applications is reconstructing their…
In ergonomics and biomechanics, muscle fatigue models based on maximum endurance time (MET) models are often used to integrate fatigue effect into ergonomic and biomechanical application. However, due to the empirical principle of those MET…
The Finite Element Method (FEM) is a well-established procedure for computing approximate solutions to deterministic engineering problems described by partial differential equations. FEM produces discrete approximations of the solution with…
This paper presents the design, control, and applications of a multi-segment soft robotic arm. In order to design a soft arm with large load capacity, several design principles are proposed by analyzing two kinds of buckling issues, under…
Recently, there has been a growing interest in rescue robots due to their vital role in addressing emergency scenarios and providing crucial support in challenging or hazardous situations where human intervention is difficult. However, very…
This paper presents a novel soft robotic system for a deformable mannequin that can be employed to physically realize the 3D geometry of different human bodies. The soft membrane on a mannequin is deformed by inflating several curved…
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…
Soft robots - due to their intrinsic flexibility of the body - can adaptively navigate unstructured environments. One of the most popular locomotion gaits that has been implemented in soft robots is undulation. The undulation motion in soft…
Conventional soft pneumatic actuators, typically based on hollow elastomeric chambers, often suffer from small structural support and require costly geometry-specific redesigns for multimodal functionality. Porous materials such as foam,…
Robots built from soft materials will inherently apply lower environmental forces than their rigid counterparts, and therefore may be more suitable in sensitive settings with unintended contact. However, these robots' applied forces result…
Series Elastic Actuators provide many benefits in force control of robots in unconstrained environments. These benefits include high force fidelity, extremely low impedance, low friction, and good force control bandwidth. Series Elastic…
Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) systems are successful in restoring motor function and supporting paralyzed users. Commercially available FES products are open loop, meaning that the system is unable to adapt to changing conditions…
In this paper an experimental validation of numerical approaches aimed to predict the coupled behaviour of microbeams for out-of-plane bending tests is performed. This work completes a previous investigation concerning in plane microbeams…
We introduce a novel hybrid methodology combining classical finite element methods (FEM) with neural networks to create a well-performing and generalizable surrogate model for forward and inverse problems. The residual from finite element…
Modern robots embody power and precision control. Yet, as robots undertake tasks that apply forces on humans, this power brings risk of injury. Soft robotic actuators use deformation to produce smooth, continuous motions and conform to…