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Collaborative robots must simultaneously be safe enough to operate in close proximity to human operators and powerful enough to assist users in industrial tasks such as lifting heavy equipment. The requirement for safety necessitates that…
Legged locomotion shows promise for running in complex, unstructured environments. Designing such legged robots requires considering heterogeneous, multi-domain constraints and variables, from mechanical hardware and geometry choices to…
Soft robotics focuses on designing robots with highly deformable materials, allowing them to adapt and operate safely and reliably in unstructured and variable environments. While soft robots offer increased compliance over rigid body…
Manipulating three-dimensional (3D) deformable objects presents significant challenges for robotic systems due to their infinite-dimensional state space and complex deformable dynamics. This paper proposes a novel model-free approach for…
This paper presents the design, control, and applications of a multi-segment soft robotic arm. In order to design a soft arm with large load capacity, several design principles are proposed by analyzing two kinds of buckling issues, under…
Learning contact-rich, robotic manipulation skills is a challenging problem due to the high-dimensionality of the state and action space as well as uncertainty from noisy sensors and inaccurate motor control. To combat these factors and…
This article takes a step to provide humanoid robots with adaptive morphology abilities. We present a systematic approach for enabling robotic covers to morph their shape, with an overall size fitting the anthropometric dimensions of a…
Learning instead of designing robot controllers can greatly reduce engineering effort required, while also emphasizing robustness. Despite considerable progress in simulation, applying learning directly in hardware is still challenging, in…
Worm-inspired robots provide an effective locomotion strategy for constrained environments by combining cyclic body deformation with alternating anchoring. For compliant robots, however, the interaction between deformable anchoring…
A new class of continuum robots has recently been explored, characterized by tip extension, significant length change, and directional control. Here, we call this class of robots "vine robots," due to their similar behavior to plants with…
Intelligence lies not only in the brain (decision-making processes) but in the body (physical morphology). The morphology of robots can significantly influence how they interact with the physical world, crucial for manipulating objects in…
Soft robotic actuators can simplify the design of controllers when operating in contact-rich environments. Importantly, their passive compliance fundamentally alters contact mechanics by smoothing impacts and distributing forces over large…
Soft robots manufactured with flexible materials can be highly compliant and adaptive to their surroundings, which facilitates their application in areas such as dexterous manipulation and environmental exploration. This paper aims at…
This paper presents the design, modeling, and fabrication of 3D-printed, tendon-actuated continuum robots featuring a flexible, tapered backbone constructed from thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). Our scalable design incorporates an…
This paper describes the design and control of a support and recovery system for use with planar legged robots. The system operates in three modes. First, it can be operated in a fully transparent mode where no forces are applied to the…
Reconfigurable robots are at the forefront of robotics innovation due to their unmatched versatility and adaptability in addressing various tasks through collaborative operations. This paper explores the design and implementation of a novel…
Dynamic control of a soft-body robot to deliver complex behaviors with low-dimensional actuation inputs is challenging. In this paper, we present a computational approach to automatically generate versatile, underactuated control policies…
For mobile robots, navigating cluttered or dynamic environments often necessitates non-prehensile manipulation, particularly when faced with objects that are too large, irregular, or fragile to grasp. The unpredictable behavior and varying…
Adaptive structures are of interest for their ability to dynamically modify mechanical properties post fabrication, enabling structural performance that is responsive to environmental uncertainty and changing loading conditions. Dynamic…
Magnetic response soft robot realizes programmable shape regulation with the help of magnetic field and produces various actions. The shape control of magnetic soft robot is based on the magnetic anisotropy caused by the orderly…