Related papers: A Hybrid Adaptive Controller for Soft Robot Interc…
Positive-negative pressure regulation is critical to soft robotic actuators, enabling large motion ranges and versatile actuation modes. However, achieving high-performance regulation across both pressure polarities remains challenging due…
Soft and soft-rigid hybrid robots are inherently underactuated and operate under tight actuator limits, making task-space control with stability guarantees challenging. Common nonlinear strategies for soft robots (e.g., those based on PD…
This paper presents a neural-network based adaptive feedback control structure to regulate the velocity of 3D bipedal robots under dynamics uncertainties. Existing Hybrid Zero Dynamics (HZD)-based controllers regulate velocity through the…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
We develop a hybrid control approach for robot learning based on combining learned predictive models with experience-based state-action policy mappings to improve the learning capabilities of robotic systems. Predictive models provide an…
Although soft robots show safer interactions with their environment than traditional robots, soft mechanisms and actuators still have significant potential for damage or degradation particularly during unmodeled contact. This article…
Soft robots offer adaptability and safe interaction with complex environments. Rapid prototyping kits that allow soft robots to be assembled easily will allow different geometries to be explored quickly to suit different environments or to…
Electromechanical switching devices such as relays, solenoid valves, and contactors offer several technical and economic advantages that make them widely used in industry. However, uncontrolled operations result in undesirable…
With soft robotics being increasingly employed in settings demanding high and controlled contact forces, recent research has demonstrated the use of soft robots to estimate or intrinsically sense forces without requiring external sensing…
Flexible robots have advantages over rigid robots in their ability to conform physically to their environment and to form a wide variety of shapes. Sensing the force applied by or to flexible robots is useful for both navigation and…
Soft grippers, with their inherent compliance and adaptability, show advantages for delicate and versatile manipulation tasks in robotics. This paper presents a novel approach to underactuated control of multiple soft actuators, explicitly…
Fluidically actuated soft robots have promising capabilities such as inherent compliance and user safety. The control of soft robots needs to properly handle nonlinear actuation dynamics, motion constraints, workspace limitations, and…
The paper proposes a feed-forward control strategy for mobile robot control that accounts for a non-linear model of the vehicle with interaction between inputs and outputs. It is possible to include specific model uncertainties in the…
Modularity in robotics holds great potential. In principle, modular robots can be disassembled and reassembled in different robots, and possibly perform new tasks. Nevertheless, actually exploiting modularity is yet an unsolved problem:…
Continuum soft robots are inherently underactuated and subject to intrinsic input constraints, making dynamic control particularly challenging, especially in hybrid rigid-soft robots. While most existing methods focus on quasi-static…
The deformable and continuum nature of soft robots promises versatility and adaptability. However, control of modular, multi-limbed soft robots for terrestrial locomotion is challenging due to the complex robot structure, actuator mechanics…
We design and experimentally evaluate a hybrid safe-by-construction collision avoidance controller for autonomous vehicles. The controller combines into a single architecture the respective advantages of an adaptive controller and a…
Soft robots have drawn significant attention recently for their ability to achieve rich shapes when interacting with complex environments. However, their elasticity and flexibility compared to rigid robots also pose significant challenges…
We develop an autonomous navigation algorithm for a robot operating in two-dimensional environments containing obstacles, with arbitrary non-convex shapes, which can be in close proximity with each other, as long as there exists at least…
The manual design of soft robots and their controllers is notoriously challenging, but it could be augmented---or, in some cases, entirely replaced---by automated design tools. Machine learning algorithms can automatically propose, test,…