Related papers: A Compact Variable Stiffness Actuator for Agile Le…
Portable active back support devices (BSDs) offer tunable assistance but are often bulky and heavy, limiting their usability. In contrast, passive BSDs are lightweight and compact but lack the ability to adapt their assistance to different…
The nonlinear mechanics of a flexible elastic rod constrained at its edges by a pair of sliding sleeves is analyzed. The planar equilibrium configurations of this variable-length elastica are found to have shape defined only by the…
Legged rovers provide enhanced mobility compared to wheeled platforms, enabling navigation on steep and irregular planetary terrains. However, traditional legged locomotion might be energetically inefficient and potentially dangerous to the…
Rigid-bodied robots often lack compliance needed to adapt to unstructured environments, while fully soft robots, though highly adaptable, struggle with scalability and load capacity. In nature, musculoskeletal systems balance strength and…
This study introduces an innovative design for a Variable Stiffness 3 Degrees of Freedom actuated wrist capable of actively and continuously adjusting its overall stiffness by modulating the active length of non-linear elastic elements.…
Compliance is a strong requirement for human-robot interactions. Soft-robots provide an opportunity to cover the lack of compliance in conventional actuation mechanisms, however, the control of them is very challenging given their intrinsic…
Successful real-world deployment of legged robots would require them to adapt in real-time to unseen scenarios like changing terrains, changing payloads, wear and tear. This paper presents Rapid Motor Adaptation (RMA) algorithm to solve…
Some animals exhibit multi-modal locomotion capability to traverse a wide range of terrains and environments, such as amphibians that can swim and walk or birds that can fly and walk. This capability is extremely beneficial for expanding…
Due to their ability to adapt to different terrains, quadruped robots have drawn much attention in the research field of robot learning. Legged mobile manipulation, where a quadruped robot is equipped with a robotic arm, can greatly enhance…
Vision language action models (VLAs) are increasingly used for Physical AI, but deploying a pre-trained VLA model to unseen environments, embodiments, or tasks still requires adaptation. Parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT), especially…
Legged robots have enormous potential in their range of capabilities, from navigating unstructured terrains to high-speed running. However, designing robust controllers for highly agile dynamic motions remains a substantial challenge for…
Macroscale robotic systems have demonstrated great capabilities of high speed, precise, and agile functions. However, the ability of soft robots to perform complex tasks, especially in centimeter and millimeter scale, remains limited due to…
This paper presents a new teleoperated spherical tensegrity robot capable of performing locomotion on steep inclined surfaces. With a novel control scheme centered around the simultaneous actuation of multiple cables, the robot demonstrates…
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…
Legged robots have the potential to traverse complex terrain and access confined spaces beyond the reach of traditional platforms thanks to their ability to carefully select footholds and flexibly adapt their body posture while walking.…
Quadruped robots are designed to achieve agile and robust locomotion by drawing inspiration from legged animals. However, most existing control methods for quadruped robots lack a key capacity observed in animals: the ability to exhibit…
Numerous soft actuators based on PneuNet design have already been proposed and extensively employed across various soft robotics applications in recent years. Despite their widespread use, a common limitation of most existing designs is…
In this paper, a compressed air-actuated soft robotic module was developed by incorporating a shape memory alloy (SMA) wire into its structure to achieve the desired bending angle with greater precision. First, a fiber-reinforced bending…
Soft, tip-extending "vine" robots offer a unique mode of inspection and manipulation in highly constrained environments. For practicality, it is desirable that the distal end of the robot can be manipulated freely, while the body remains…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…