Related papers: Rapid design of fully soft deployable structures v…
For centuries, human civilizations devised metal forming techniques to make tools and items; yet, customized metal forming remains costly and intricate. Laser-forming origami} (lasergami) is a metal forming process where a laser beam cuts…
Origami offers a promising alternative for designing innovative soft robotic actuators. While features of origami, such as bi-directional motion and structural anisotropy, haven't been extensively explored in the past, this letter presents…
Creases are purposely introduced to thin structures for designing deployable origami, artistic geometries, and functional structures with tunable nonlinear mechanics. Modeling the mechanics of creased structures is challenging because…
We leverage the snap-through response of a bistable origami mechanism to induce a discontinuous evolution of drag with flow speed. The transition between equilibrium states is passively actuated by airflow, and we demonstrate that large…
In robotic surgery, pattern cutting through a deformable material is a challenging research field. The cutting procedure requires a robot to concurrently manipulate a scissor and a gripper to cut through a predefined contour trajectory on…
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…
The dramatic effect kirigami, such as hole cutting, has on the elastic properties of thin sheets invites a study of the mechanics of thin elastic frames under an external load. Such frames can be thought of as modular elements needed to…
Nematic elastomers and glasses are solids that display spontaneous distortion under external stimuli. Recent advances in the synthesis of sheets with controlled heterogeneities have enabled their actuation into non-trivial shapes with…
We propose a novel computational framework for modeling and simulating origami structures. In this framework, bilinear solid-shell elements are employed to model the origami panels while crease folding is considered through the angle…
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…
Discrete optimization belongs to the set of $\mathcal{NP}$-hard problems, spanning fields such as mixed-integer programming and combinatorial optimization. A current standard approach to solving convex discrete optimization problems is the…
Inverse design of high-resolution and fine-detailed 3D lightweight mechanical structures is notoriously expensive due to the need for vast computational resources and the use of very fine-scaled complex meshes. Furthermore, in designing for…
Regrasping on fixtures is a promising approach to reduce pose uncertainty in robotic assembly, but conventional rigid fixtures lack adaptability and require dedicated designs for each part. To overcome this limitation, we propose a soft jig…
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…
Evolution in time-varying environments naturally leads to adaptable biological systems that can easily switch functionalities. Advances in the synthesis of environmentally-responsive materials therefore open up the possibility of creating a…
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…
Materials discovery is fundamental to advance next-generation technologies as well as for sustainable and circular economy. Beyond computational screening, generative models are efficient at finding materials with desired properties, via…
The rapid design and fabrication of soft robotic matter is of growing interest for shape morphing, actuation, and wearable devices. Here, we report a facile fabrication method for creating soft robotic materials with embedded pneumatics…
Mechanical metamaterials owe their extraordinary properties and functionalities to their micro-/nanoscale design of which shape, including both geometry and topology, is perhaps the most important aspect. 4D printing enables programmed,…
Inverse design in science and engineering involves determining optimal design parameters that achieve desired performance outcomes, a process often hindered by the complexity and high dimensionality of design spaces, leading to significant…