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Biological synergies have emerged as a widely adopted paradigm for dexterous hand design, enabling human-like manipulation with a small number of actuators. Nonetheless, excessive coupling tends to diminish the dexterity of hands. This…
Human manipulation skills represent a pinnacle of their voluntary motor functions, requiring the coordination of many degrees of freedom and processing of high-dimensional sensor input to achieve remarkable dexterity. Thus, we set out to…
We automate soft robotic hand design iteration by co-optimizing design and control policy for dexterous manipulation skills in simulation. Our design iteration pipeline combines genetic algorithms and policy transfer to learn control…
Operating robots precisely and at high speeds has been a long-standing goal of robotics research. Balancing these competing demands is key to enabling the seamless collaboration of robots and humans and increasing task performance. However,…
Soft robots are promising for manipulation tasks thanks to their compliance, safety, and high degree of freedom. However, the commonly used bidirectional continuum segment design means soft robotic manipulators only function in a limited…
Dexterous manipulation has been a long-standing challenge in robotics. While machine learning techniques have shown some promise, results have largely been currently limited to simulation. This can be mostly attributed to the lack of…
Safe yet stable grasping requires a robotic hand to apply sufficient force on the object to immobilize it while keeping it from getting damaged. Soft robotic hands have been proposed for safe grasping due to their passive compliance, but…
This study investigates the kinematic role of palm degrees of freedom (DoF) in enhancing thumb opposability in a five-finger robotic hand. A hand model consisting of a five DoF thumb and four fingers with three to four DoF is analyzed,…
Compared to traditional rigid robotics, soft robotics has attracted increasing attention due to its advantages as compliance, safety, and low cost. As an essential part of soft robotics, the soft robotic gripper also shows its superior…
Variable Stiffness Actuators prove invaluable for robotics applications in unstructured environments, fostering safe interactions and enhancing task adaptability. Nevertheless, their mechanical design inevitably results in larger and…
The high cost of robotic platforms limits students' ability to gain practical skills directly applicable in real-world scenarios. To address this challenge, this paper presents TARA, a low-cost, 3D-printed robotic arm designed for…
This paper presents a design methodology of a hydraulically-driven soft robotic gripper for grasping a large and heavy object -- approximately 10 - 20 kg with 20 - 30 cm diameter. Most existing soft grippers are pneumatically actuated with…
This paper presents Forte, a fully 3D-printable, 6-DoF robotic arm designed to achieve near industrial-grade performance - 0.63 kg payload, 0.467 m reach, and sub-millimeter repeatability - at a material cost under $215. As an accessible…
To achieve human-like dexterity for anthropomorphic robotic hands, it is essential to understand the biomechanics and control strategies of the human hand, in order to reduce the number of actuators being used without loosing hand…
The human hand plays a vital role in daily life and industrial applications, yet replicating its multifunctional capabilities-including motion, sensing, and coordinated manipulation with robotic systems remains a formidable challenge.…
One important vision of robotics is to provide physical assistance by manipulating different everyday objects, e.g., hand tools, kitchen utensils. However, many objects designed for dexterous hand-control are not easily manipulable by a…
We describe a force-controlled robotic gripper with built-in tactile and 3D perception. We also describe a complete autonomous manipulation pipeline consisting of object detection, segmentation, point cloud processing, force-controlled…
Dynamic motions are a key feature of robotic arms, enabling them to perform tasks quickly and efficiently. Soft continuum manipulators do not currently consider dynamic parameters when operating in task space. This shortcoming makes…
Achieving human-level dexterity in robotic hands remains a fundamental challenge for enabling versatile manipulation across diverse applications. This extended abstract presents BiDexHand, a cable-driven biomimetic robotic hand that…
Impressive animal locomotion capabilities are mediated by the co-evolution of the skeletal morphology and muscular properties. Legged robot performance would also likely benefit from the co-optimization of actuators and leg morphology.…