Related papers: Stiffness Change for Reconfiguration of Inflated B…
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…
Soft robots are known for their ability to perform tasks with great adaptability, enabled by their distributed, non-uniform stiffness and actuation. Bending is the most fundamental motion for soft robot design, but creating robust, and…
Through the implementation of reconfigurability to achieve flexibility and adaptation to tasks by morphology changes rather than by increasing the number of joints, malleable robots present advantages over traditional serial robot arms in…
The purpose of this research is to design, fabricate and test a tendon driven a continuum soft robot with three modular segments, each of which has a tunable stiffness enabled by layer jamming technology. Compared with previous studies, the…
Shape change enables new capabilities for robots. One class of robots capable of dramatic shape change is soft growing "vine" robots. These robots usually feature global actuation methods for bending that limit them to simple,…
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…
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,…
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…
Soft robot serial chain manipulators with the capability for growth, stiffness control, and discrete joints have the potential to approach the dexterity of traditional robot arms, while improving safety, lowering cost, and providing an…
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…
Continuum robots have gained widespread popularity due to their inherent compliance and flexibility, particularly their adjustable levels of stiffness for various application scenarios. Despite efforts to dynamic modeling and control…
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…
Soft robotics, with their inherent flexibility and infinite degrees of freedom (DoF), offer promising advancements in human-machine interfaces. Particularly, pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) and pneumatic bending actuators have been…
Achieving human-like dexterity in robotic grippers remains an open challenge, particularly in ensuring robust manipulation in uncertain environments. Soft robotic hands try to address this by leveraging passive compliance, a characteristic…
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.,…
Soft robots offer an alternative approach to manipulate inside the constrained space while maintaining the safe interaction with the external environment. Due to its adaptable compliance characteristic, external contact force can easily…
For the majority of tasks performed by traditional serial robot arms, such as bin picking or pick and place, only two or three degrees of freedom (DOF) are required for motion; however, by augmenting the number of degrees of freedom,…
Variable impedance control is advantageous for physical human-robot interaction to improve safety, adaptability and many other aspects. This paper presents a gain-scheduled variable stiffness control approach under strict frequency-domain…
Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…
Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…