Related papers: Variable Stiffness Improves Safety and Performance…
This paper presents a novel, modular, cable-driven soft robotic arm featuring multi-segment reconfigurability. The proposed architecture enables a stackable system with independent segment control, allowing scalable adaptation to diverse…
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…
This paper presents a new stiffness modulation mechanism that enables infinite-range stiffness modulation in a fast manner. The proposed stiffness modulation mechanism can help improve many robot environment interaction applications such as…
The rise in additive manufacturing comes with unique opportunities and challenges. Massive part customization and rapid design changes are made possible with additive manufacturing, however, manufacturing industries that desire the…
Over the past few decades, efforts have been made towards robust robotic grasping, and therefore dexterous manipulation. The soft gripper has shown their potential in robust grasping due to their inherent properties-low, control complexity,…
The stiffness modulation mechanism for soft robotics has gained considerable attention to improve deformability, controllability, and stability. However, for the existing stiffness soft actuator, high lateral stiffness and a wide range of…
Soft robotic grippers demonstrate great potential for gently and safely handling objects; however, their full potential for executing precise and secure grasping has been limited by the lack of integrated sensors, leading to problems such…
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…
This paper expounds the design and control of a new Variable Stiffness Series Elastic Actuator (VSSEA). It is established by employing a modular mechanical design approach that allows us to effectively optimise the stiffness modulation…
Soft robotic grippers are shown to be high effective for grasping unstructured objects with simple sensing and control strategies. However, they are still limited by their speed, sensing capabilities and actuation mechanism. Hence, their…
Springs are commonly used in wearable robotic devices to provide assistive joint torque without the need for motors and batteries. However, different tasks (such as walking or running) and different users (such as athletes with strong legs…
Currently grip control during in-hand manipulation is usually modeled as part of a monolithic task, yielding complex controllers based on force control specialized for their situations. Such non-modular and specialized control approaches…
Grip surfaces with tunable friction can actively modify contact conditions, enabling transitions between higher- and lower-friction states for grasp adjustment. Friction can be increased to grip securely and then decreased to gently release…
Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…
Robotic arms built from stiffness-adjustable, continuously bending segments serially connected with revolute joints have the ability to change their mechanical architecture and workspace, thus allowing high flexibility and adaptation to…
Compliance is a strong requirement for human-robot interactions. Soft-robots provide an opportunity to cover the lack of compliance in conventional actuation mechanisms, however, the control of them is very challenging given their intrinsic…
An autonomous robotic nut tightening system for a serial manipulator equipped with a parallel gripper is proposed. The system features a hierarchical motion-primitive-based planner and a control-switching scheme that alternates between…
Recently, suction-based robotic systems with microscopic features or active suction components have been proposed to grip rough and irregular surfaces. However, sophisticated fabrication methods or complex control systems are required for…
Modulating the stiffness of soft actuators is crucial for improving the efficiency of interaction with the environment. However, current stiffness modulation mechanisms are hard to achieve high lateral stiffness and a wide range of bending…
Soft robotic manipulators are attractive for a range of applications such as medical interventions or industrial inspections in confined environments. A myriad of soft robotic manipulators have been proposed in the literature, but their…