Related papers: Lifetime-configurable soft robots via photodegrada…
Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…
Soft robots enable safe, adaptive interaction with complex environments but remain difficult to sense and control due to their highly deformable structures. Architected soft materials such as helicoid lattices offer tunable stiffness and…
Continuum soft robots, composed of flexible materials, exhibit theoretically infinite degrees of freedom, enabling notable adaptability in unstructured environments. Cosserat Rod Theory has emerged as a prominent framework for modeling…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
Natural systems integrate the work of many sub-units (cells) toward a large-scale unified goal (morphological and behavioral), which can counteract the effects of unexpected experiences, damage, or simply changes in tasks demands. In this…
Switchable adhesives have the potential to improve the manufacturing and recycling of parts and to enable new modes of motility for soft robots. Here, we demonstrate magnetically-switchable adhesion of a two-phase composite to non-magnetic…
Combined dry-wet transient materials and devices are introduced, which are based on water-dissolvable dye-doped polymers layered onto non-polar cyclic hydrocarbon sublimating substrates. Light-emitting heterostructures showing amplified…
The fields of soft and bio-inspired robotics promise to imbue synthetic systems with capabilities found in the natural world. However, many of these biological capabilities are yet to be realized. For example, vines in nature direct growth…
Soft robots are inherently compliant and have a strong potential to realize human-friendly and safe robots. Despite continued research highlighting the potential of soft robots, they remain largely confined to laboratory settings. In this…
The ocean vast unexplored regions and diverse soft-bodied marine organisms have spurred interest in bio-inspired underwater soft robotics. Recent advances have enabled new capabilities in underwater movement, sensing, and interaction.…
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the importance of digital fabrication to enable online learning, which remains a challenge for robotics courses. We introduce a teaching methodology that allows students to participate remotely in a…
Deployable structures, essential across various engineering applications ranging from umbrellas to satellites, are evolving to include soft, morphable designs where geometry drives transformation. However, a major challenge for soft…
Soft robots are distinguished by their flexibility and adaptability, allowing them to perform nearly impossible tasks for rigid robots. However, controlling their behavior is challenging due to their nonlinear material response and infinite…
Traditional robots have rigid links and structures that limit their ability to interact with the dynamics of their immediate environment. For example, conventional robot manipulators with rigid links can only manipulate objects using…
The design of physical compliance -- its location, degree, and structure -- affects robot performance and robustness in contact-rich tasks. While compliance is often used in the robot's joints, flange, or end-effector, this paper proposes…
Soft robotics leverages deformable materials to develop robots capable of navigating unstructured and dynamic environments. Silicone Voxel-Based Soft Robots (Silibots) are a type of pneumatically actuated soft robots that rely on the…
Soft robots employing compliant materials and deformable structures offer great potential for wearable devices that are comfortable and safe for human interaction. However, achieving both structural integrity and compliance for comfort…
An accurate, physically-based, and differentiable model of soft robots can unlock downstream applications in optimal control. The Finite Element Method (FEM) is an expressive approach for modeling highly deformable structures such as…
Soft stretchable materials are key for arising technologies such as stretchable electronics or batteries, smart textiles, biomedical devices, tissue engineering and soft robotics. Recent attempts to design such materials, via e.g.…
To achieve real-world functionality, robots must have the ability to carry out decision-making computations. However, soft robots stretch and therefore need a solution other than rigid computers. Examples of embedding computing capacity…