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In recent years, there has been a notable increase in the significance of active mechanical metamaterials capable of being remotely manipulated through changes in external stimuli. While research in this area has achieved considerable…
Acoustic metamaterials are artificial structures, often lattice of resonators, with unusual properties. They can be engineered to stop wave propagation in specific frequency bands. Once manufactured, their dispersive qualities remain…
Like mammals, robots must rapidly learn to control their bodies and interact with their environment despite incomplete knowledge of their body structure and surroundings. They must also adapt to continuous changes in both. This work…
Foams are versatile by nature and ubiquitous in a wide range of applications, including padding, insulation, and acoustic dampening. Previous work established that foams 3D printed via Viscous Thread Printing (VTP) can in principle combine…
The rapidly developing robotics industry demands structures with novel mechanical functions. Traditional approaches, developing new materials and designing new structures, face two challenges. Highly complex force-displacement functions can…
Prions are misfolded proteins that transmit their structural arrangement to neighboring proteins. In biological systems, prion dynamics can produce a variety of complex functional outcomes. Yet, an understanding of prionic causes has been…
Tactile sensing represents a crucial technique that can enhance the performance of robotic manipulators in various tasks. This work presents a novel bioinspired neuromorphic vision-based tactile sensor that uses an event-based camera to…
Ionic polymer actuators, in essence, consist of ion exchange polymers sandwiched between layers of electrodes. They have recently gained recognition as promising candidates for soft actuators due to their lightweight nature, noise-free…
Articulated objects like doors, drawers, valves, and tools are pervasive in our everyday unstructured dynamic environments. Articulation models describe the joint nature between the different parts of an articulated object. As most of these…
Active colloidal particles provide versatile model systems for exploring non-equilibrium physics in motile matter. To date, most experimental realizations have focused on spherical particles, largely due to fabrication constraints. However,…
Inspired by the necessity of morphological adaptation in animals, a growing body of work has attempted to expand robot training to encompass physical aspects of a robot's design. However, reinforcement learning methods capable of optimizing…
Grasping deformable objects is not well researched due to the complexity in modelling and simulating the dynamic behavior of such objects. However, with the rapid development of physics-based simulators that support soft bodies, the…
Curved elastic shells can be fabricated through molding or by harnessing residual stresses. These shells often exhibit snap-through behavior and multistability when loaded. We present a unique way of fabricating curved elastic shells that…
Real-time proprioception is a challenging problem for soft robots, which have almost infinite degrees-of-freedom in body deformation. When multiple actuators are used, it becomes more difficult as deformation can also occur on actuators…
Highly constrained manipulation tasks continue to be challenging for autonomous robots as they require high levels of precision, typically less than 1mm, which is often incompatible with what can be achieved by traditional perception…
Humanoid robots, as general-purpose physical agents, must integrate both intelligent control and adaptive morphology to operate effectively in diverse real-world environments. While recent research has focused primarily on optimizing…
Activity and autonomous motion are fundamental aspects of many living and engineering systems. Here, the scale of biological agents covers a wide range, from nanomotors, cytoskeleton, and cells, to insects, fish, birds, and people. Inspired…
Microfluidic valves play a key role within microfluidic systems by regulating fluid flow through distinct microchannels, enabling many advanced applications in medical diagnostics, lab-on-chips, and laboratory automation. While microfluidic…
This paper proposes a unified vision-based manipulation framework using image contours of deformable/rigid objects. Instead of using human-defined cues, the robot automatically learns the features from processed vision data. Our method…
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…