Related papers: Passive Shape Locking for Multi-Bend Growing Infla…
Soft, tip-extending "vine" robots offer a unique mode of inspection and manipulation in highly constrained environments. For practicality, it is desirable that the distal end of the robot can be manipulated freely, while the body remains…
Active control of the shape of soft robots is challenging. Despite having an infinite number of passive degrees of freedom (DOFs), soft robots typically only have a few actively controllable DOFs, limited by the number of degrees of…
Everting, soft growing vine robots benefit from reduced friction with their environment, which allows them to navigate challenging terrain. Vine robots can use air pouches attached to their sides for lateral steering. However, when all…
Vine robots are a class of soft continuum robots that grow via tip eversion, allowing them to move their tip without relying on reaction forces from the environment. Constructed from compliant materials such as fabric and thin, flexible…
Soft pneumatic legged robots show promise in their ability to traverse a range of different types of terrain, including natural unstructured terrain met in applications like precision agriculture. They can adapt their body morphology to the…
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…
Inflated-beam soft robots, such as tip-everting vine robots, can control curvature by contracting one beam side via pneumatic actuation. This work develops a general finite element modeling approach to characterize their bending. The model…
Soft, vine-inspired growing robots that move by eversion are highly mobile in confined environments, but, when faced with gaps in the environment, they may collapse under their own weight while navigating a desired path. In this work, we…
Robotic systems operating in unstructured environments require the ability to switch between compliant and rigid states to perform diverse tasks such as adaptive grasping, high-force manipulation, shape holding, and navigation in…
Robots built from soft materials can alter their shape and size in a particular profile. This shape-changing ability could be extremely helpful for rescue robots and those operating in unknown terrains and environments. In changing shape,…
Hyper-redundant robots offer high dexterity, making them good at operating in confined and unstructured environments. To extend the reachable workspace, we built a multi-segment flexible rack actuated planar robot. However, the compliance…
Continuum and soft robots can leverage complex actuator shapes to take on useful shapes while actuating only a few of their many degrees of freedom. Continuum robots that also grow increase the range of potential shapes that can be actuated…
When modeling complex robot systems such as branched robots, whose kinematic structures are a tree, current techniques often require modeling the whole structure from scratch, even when partial models for the branches are available. This…
Grasping mechanisms must both create and subsequently hold grasps that permit safe and effective object manipulation. Existing mechanisms address the different functional requirements of grasp creation and grasp holding using a single…
Soft growing robots, commonly referred to as vine robots, have demonstrated remarkable ability to interact safely and robustly with unstructured and dynamic environments. It is therefore natural to exploit contact with the environment for…
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…
Exploring the design and control strategies of soft robots through simulation is highly attractive due to its cost-effectiveness. Although many existing models (e.g., finite element analysis) are effective for simulating soft robotic…
Shared Control methods often use impedance control to track target poses in a robotic manipulator. The guidance behavior of such controllers is shaped by the used stiffness gains, which can be varying over time to achieve an adaptive…
Soft Robots distinguish themselves from traditional robots by embracing flexible kinematics. Because of their recent emergence, there exist numerous uncharted territories, including novel actuators, manufacturing processes, and advanced…
Continuum robots with variable compliance have gained significant attention due to their adaptability in unstructured environments. Among various stiffness modulation techniques, layer jamming (LJ) provides a simple yet effective approach…