Related papers: Growing structure based on viscous actuation of co…

Much of the Earth and many surfaces of extraterrestrial bodies are composed of in-cohesive particle matter. Locomoting on granular terrain is challenging for common robotic devices, either wheeled or legged. In this work, we discover a…

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…

One of the biggest perceived challenges in building megastructures, such as the space elevator, is the unavailability of materials with sufficient tensile strength. The presumed necessity of very strong materials stems from a design…

A leading concept in soft robotics actuation, as well as in microfluidics applications such as valves in lab-on-a-chip devices, is applying pressurized flow in cavities embedded within elastic bodies. Generating complex deformation patterns…

Extrinsic manipulation, a technique that enables robots to leverage extrinsic resources for object manipulation, presents practical yet challenging scenarios. Particularly in the context of extrinsic manipulation on a supporting plane,…

Shells, i.e., objects made of a thin layer of material following a surface, are among the most common structures in use. They are highly efficient, in terms of material required to maintain strength, but also prone to deformation and…

Borrowing elementary ideas from solid mechanics and differential geometry, this presentation shows that the volume swept by a regular solid undergoing a wide class of volume-preserving deformations induces a rather natural metric structure…

Biological growth is often driven by mechanical cues, such as changes in external pressure or tensile loading. Moreover, it is well known that many living tissues actively maintain a preferred level of mechanical internal stress, called the…

The shape of materials is often subject to a number of geometric constraints that limit the size of the system or fix the structure of its boundary. In soft and biological materials, however, these constraints are not always hard, but are…

We present experimental results on slow flow properties of a granular assembly confined in a vertical column and driven upwards at a constant velocity V. For monodisperse assemblies this study evidences at low velocities ($1<V<100 \mu m/s$)…

The structural complexity of metamaterials is limitless, although in practice, most designs comprise periodic architectures which lead to materials with spatially homogeneous features. More advanced tasks, arising in e.g. soft robotics,…

Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are no good dynamic simulation tools to predict the motion or performance of a microrobot as it moves against a substrate. At…

Vine robots extend their tubular bodies by everting material from the tip, enabling navigation in complex environments with a minimalist soft body. Despite their promise for field applications, especially in the urban search and rescue…

In this article, we present a mechanism and related path planning algorithm to construct light-duty barriers out of extruded, inflated tubes weaved around existing environmental features. Our extruded tubes are based on everted vine-robots…

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…

Viscoplastic flow of polycrystalline metallic materials is the result of motion and interaction of dislocations, line defects of the crystalline structure. In the microstructural (physics-based) constitutive model presented in this paper,…

In this paper, we introduce a design principle to develop novel soft modular robots based on tensegrity structures and inspired by the cytoskeleton of living cells. We describe a novel strategy to realize tensegrity structures using planar…

Humans possess a remarkable ability to react to unpredictable perturbations through immediate mechanical responses, which harness the visco-elastic properties of muscles to maintain balance. Inspired by this behaviour, we propose a novel…

Image acquisition techniques such as micro-computed tomography are nowadays widely available. Quantitative analysis of the resulting 3D image data enables geometric characterization of the micro-structure of materials. Stochastic geometry…

For robots to become more versatile and expand their areas of application, their bodies need to be suitable for contact with the environment. When the human body comes into contact with the environment, it is possible for it to continue to…