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Contrary to the stunning feats observed in birds of prey, aerial manipulation and grasping with flying robots still lack versatility and agility. Conventional approaches using rigid manipulators require precise positioning and are subject…

Soft robotics has emerged as a promising technology that holds great potential for various application areas. This is due to soft materials unique properties, including flexibility, safety, and shock absorption, among others. Despite many…

Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…

Any two objects in contact with each other exert a force that could be simply due to gravity or mechanical contact, such as a robotic arm gripping an object or even the contact between two bones at our knee joints. The ability to naturally…

Robot-to-human object handover is an essential skill for robot assistants, from serving drinks at home to passing surgical tools in the operating room. We expect robots to perform handover robustly -- to release the object only after a firm…

Soft robots have immense potential given their inherent safety and adaptability, but challenges in soft actuator forces and design constraints have limited scaling up soft robots to larger sizes. Electrothermal shape memory alloy (SMA)…

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…

The advent of tactile sensors in robotics has sparked many ideas on how robots can leverage direct contact measurements of their environment interactions to improve manipulation tasks. An important line of research in this regard is that of…

We address the challenge of reliable and accurate proprioception in soft robots, specifically those with tight packaging constraints and relying only on internally embedded sensors. While various sensing approaches with single sensors have…

Soft robots are made of compliant materials and perform tasks that are challenging for rigid robots. However, their continuum nature makes it difficult to develop model-based control strategies. This work presents a robust model-based…

Human skin can accurately sense the self-decoupled normal and shear forces when in contact with objects of different sizes. Although there exist many soft and conformable tactile sensors on robotic applications able to decouple the normal…

We present a tactile sensing method enabled by the mechanical compliance of soft robots; an externally attachable photoreflective module reads surface deformation of silicone skin to estimate contact force without embedding tactile…

To function autonomously in the physical world, humanoid robots need high-fidelity sensing systems, especially for forces that cannot be easily modeled. Modeling forces in robot feet is particularly challenging due to static indeterminacy,…

Flying robots, such as quadrotor drones, offer new possibilities for human-robot interaction but often pose safety risks due to fast-spinning propellers, rigid structures, and noise. In contrast, lighter-than-air flapping-wing robots,…

Dynamic control of a soft-body robot to deliver complex behaviors with low-dimensional actuation inputs is challenging. In this paper, we present a computational approach to automatically generate versatile, underactuated control policies…

Tactile sensing plays a fundamental role in enabling robots to navigate dynamic and unstructured environments, particularly in applications such as delicate object manipulation, surface exploration, and human-robot interaction. In this…

Soft robotic hands and grippers are increasingly attracting attention as a robotic end-effector. Compared with rigid counterparts, they are safer for human-robot and environment-robot interactions, easier to control, lower cost and weight,…

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…

Exposing an Evolutionary Algorithm that is used to evolve robot controllers to variable conditions is necessary to obtain solutions which are robust and can cross the reality gap. However, we do not yet have methods for analyzing and…

We propose a new robotic cover prototype that achieves thermal display while also being soft. We focus on the thermal cue because previous human studies have identified it as part of the touch pleasantness. The robotic cover surface can be…