Related papers: Growing structure based on viscous actuation of co…
This work establishes a solution to the problem of assessing the capacity of multi-object assemblies to withstand external forces without becoming unstable. Our physically-grounded approach handles arbitrary structures made from rigid…
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…
Objects moving in fluids experience patterns of stress on their surfaces determined by their motion and the geometry of nearby boundaries. Fish and underwater robots can use these patterns for navigation. This paper extends this…
We consider the physical setup of a three-dimensional fluid-structure interaction problem. A viscous compressible gas or liquid interacts with a nonlinear, visco-elastic, three-dimensional bulk solid. The latter is described by a hyperbolic…
In this paper we address some modelling issues related to biological growth. Our treatment is based on a recently-proposed, general formulation for growth within the context of Mixture Theory (Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids,…
Small-scale robots hold great potential for targeted cargo delivery in minimally-inv asive medicine. However, current robots often face challenges to locomote efficiently on slip pery biological tissue surfaces, especially when loaded with…
Robotic materials are multi-robot systems formulated to leverage the low-order computation and actuation of the constituents to manipulate the high-order behavior of the entire material. We study the behaviors of ensembles composed of smart…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are few dynamic simulation tools available to accurately predict the motion or performance of untethered microrobots as they…
The quasistatic behavior of a simple 2D model of a cohesive powder under isotropic loads is investigated by Discrete Element simulations. The loose packing states, as studied in a previous paper, undergo important structural changes under…
Modular Active Cell Robots (MACROs) are a design paradigm for modular robotic hardware that uses only two components, namely actuators and passive compliant joints. Under the MACRO approach, a large number of actuators and joints are…
Viscous streaming is an efficient rectification mechanism to exploit flow inertia at small scales for fluid and particle manipulation. It typically entails a fluid vibrating around an immersed solid feature that, by concentrating stresses,…
We present a planning and control framework for physics-based manipulation under uncertainty. The key idea is to interleave robust open-loop execution with closed-loop control. We derive robustness metrics through contraction theory. We use…
In this work we present a novel computational method for embedding arbitrary curved one-dimensional (1D) fibers into three-dimensional (3D) solid volumes, as e.g. in fiber-reinforced materials. The fibers are explicitly modeled with highly…
Grain boundary roughness can affect electronic and mechanical properties of two-dimensional materials. This roughness depends crucially on the growth process by which the two-dimensional material is formed. To investigate the key mechanisms…
Muscles of the human body are composed of tiny actuators made up of myosin and actin filaments. They can exert force in various shapes such as curved or flat, under contact forces and deformations from the environment. On the other hand,…
We report a surface instability observed during the extrusion of extremely soft elastic solids in confined geometries. Due to their unique rheological properties, these soft solids can migrate through narrow gaps by continuously everting…
The legged robots with variable stiffness actuators (VSAs) can achieve energy-efficient and versatile locomotion. However, equipping legged robots with VSAs in real-world application is usually restricted by (i) the redundant mechanical…
Inspired by the snap-through action of a steel hairclip, we propose a design method for in-plane prestressed mechanisms that exhibit biomimetic morphing and high locomotion performance. Compliant bistable flapping mechanisms are fabricated…
Robots are still poor at traversing cluttered large obstacles required for important applications like search and rescue. By contrast, animals are excellent at doing so, often using direct physical interaction with obstacles rather than…
Planning accurate manipulation for deformable objects requires prediction of their state. The prediction is often complicated by a loss of stability that may result in collapse of the deformable object. In this work, stability of a fabric…