Related papers: Machine Learning-Enabled Precision Position Contro…
Recent studies have demonstrated the immense potential of exploiting muscle actuator morphology for natural and robust movement -- in simulation. A validation on real robotic hardware is yet missing. In this study, we emulate muscle…
Animals can accomplish many incredible behavioral feats across a wide range of operational environments and scales that current robots struggle to match. One explanation for this performance gap is the extraordinary properties of the…
Passive elastic elements can contribute to stability, energetic efficiency, and impact absorption in both biological and robotic systems. They also add dynamical complexity which makes them more challenging to model and control. The impact…
Real-time adaptation is imperative to the control of robots operating in complex, dynamic environments. Adaptive control laws can endow even nonlinear systems with good trajectory tracking performance, provided that any uncertain dynamics…
Force Sensing and Force Control are essential to many industrial applications. Typically, a 6-axis Force/Torque (F/T) sensor is mounted between the robot's wrist and the end-effector in order to measure the forces and torques exerted by the…
Real-time adaptation is imperative to the control of robots operating in complex, dynamic environments. Adaptive control laws can endow even nonlinear systems with good trajectory tracking performance, provided that any uncertain dynamics…
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)…
Neural control is an exciting mystery which we instinctively master. Yet, researchers have a hard time explaining the motor control trajectories. Physiologically accurate biomechanical simulations can, to some extent, mimic live subjects…
The electrification of powertrains is rising as the objective for a more viable future is intensified. To ensure continuous and reliable operation without undesirable malfunctions, it is essential to monitor the internal temperatures of…
Humans are able to outperform robots in terms of robustness, versatility, and learning of new tasks in a wide variety of movements. We hypothesize that highly nonlinear muscle dynamics play a large role in providing inherent stability,…
Endowing continuum robots with compliance while it is interacting with the internal environment of the human body is essential to prevent damage to the robot and the surrounding tissues. Compared with passive compliance, active compliance…
The ability of robots to navigate through doors is crucial for their effective operation in indoor environments. Consequently, extensive research has been conducted to develop robots capable of opening specific doors. However, the diverse…
We present self-organizing control principles for simulated robots actuated by synthetic muscles. Muscles correspond to linear motors exerting force only when contracting, but not when expanding, with joints being actuated by pairs of…
Existing grasp controllers usually either only support finger-tip grasps or need explicit configuration of the inner forces. We propose a novel grasp controller that supports arbitrary grasp types, including power grasps with…
When do locomotion controllers require reasoning about nonlinearities? In this work, we show that a whole-body model-predictive controller using a simple linear time-invariant approximation of the whole-body dynamics is able to execute…
Soft robotics technologies have gained growing interest in recent years, which allows various applications from manufacturing to human-robot interaction. Pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM), a typical soft actuator, has been widely applied to…
Robotic systems driven by artificial muscles present unique challenges due to the nonlinear dynamics of actuators and the complex designs of mechanical structures. Traditional model-based controllers often struggle to achieve desired…
Even though artificial muscles have gained popularity due to their compliant, flexible, and compact properties, there currently does not exist an easy way of making informed decisions on the appropriate actuation strategy when designing a…
Soft robotics hold promise in the development of safe yet powered assistive wearable devices for infants. Key to this is the development of closed-loop controllers that can help regulate pneumatic pressure in the device's actuators in an…
The use of wearable robots has been widely adopted in rehabilitation training for patients with hand motor impairments. However, the uniqueness of patients' muscle loss is often overlooked. Leveraging reinforcement learning and a…