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The backswimmer fly is an aquatic insect, capable of regulating its buoyancy underwater. Its abdomen is covered with hemoglobin cells, used to bind and release oxygen, reversibly. Upon entering water, the fly entraps an air bubble in a…
Deformable robots are notoriously difficult to model or control due to its high-dimensional configuration spaces. Direct trajectory optimization suffers from the curse-of-dimensionality and incurs a high computational cost, while…
Soft modular robots enable more flexibility and safer interaction with the changing environment than traditional robots. However, it has remained challenging to create deformable connectors that can be integrated into soft machines. In this…
Floating offshore wind turbines allow wind energy to be harvested in deep waters. However, additional dynamics and structural loads may result when the floating platform is being excited by wind and waves. In this work, the conventional…
Autonomous robots can transform how we observe marine ecosystems, but close-range operation in reefs and other cluttered habitats remains difficult. Vehicles must maneuver safely near animals and fragile structures while coping with…
Soft robots are robotic systems made of deformable materials and exhibit unique flexibility that can be exploited for complex environments and tasks. However, their control problem has been considered a challenging subject because they are…
This paper discusses a framework to design elements of the plant and control systems for floating offshore wind turbines in an integrated manner using linear parameter-varying models. Multiple linearized models derived from aeroelastic…
Soft robotics is an emerging field that yields promising results for tasks that require safe and robust interactions with the environment or with humans, such as grasping, manipulation, and human-robot interaction. Soft robots rely on…
This paper proposes a new variable stiffness soft gripper that enables high-performance grasping tasks in industrial applications. The design of the proposed monolithic soft gripper includes a middle bellow and two side bellows (i.e.,…
Robotics presents a promising opportunity for enhancing bathing assistance, potentially to alleviate labor shortages and reduce care costs, while offering consistent and gentle care for individuals with physical disabilities. However,…
Advanced machine learning algorithms require platforms that are extremely robust and equipped with rich sensory feedback to handle extensive trial-and-error learning without relying on strong inductive biases. Traditional robotic designs,…
The vast majority of the ocean's volume remains unexplored, in part because of limitations on the vertical range and measurement duration of existing robotic platforms. In light of the accelerating rate of climate change impacts on the…
Autonomous robots can help people explore parts of the ocean that would be hard or impossible to get to otherwise. The increase in the availability of low-cost components has made it possible to innovate, design, and implement new and…
Floating offshore wind turbines are a novel technology, which has reached, with the first wind farm in operation, an advanced state of development. The question of how floating wind systems can be optimized to operate smoothly in harsh wind…
Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) have become the de facto vehicle for remote operations involving oceanography, inspection, and monitoring tasks. These vehicles operate in different and often challenging environments; hence, the design…
Locomotive robots that do not rely on electronics and/or electromagnetic components will open up new perspectives and applications for robotics. However, these robots usually involve complicated and tedious fabrication processes, limiting…
Electrically-driven soft robots based on piezoelectric actuators may enable compact form factors and maneuverability in complex environments. In most prior work, piezoelectric actuators are used to control a single degree of freedom. In…
Sample Exploring the ocean environment holds profound significance in areas such as resource exploration and ecological protection. Underwater robots struggle with extreme water pressure and often cause noise and damage to the underwater…
High-performance closed-loop control of truly soft continuum manipulators has remained elusive. Experimental demonstrations have largely relied on sufficiently stiff, piecewise architectures in which each actuated segment behaves as a…
Soft robots have become increasingly popular for complex manipulation tasks requiring gentle and safe contact. However, their softness makes accurate control challenging, and high-fidelity sensing is a prerequisite to adequate control…