Related papers: Reconfigurable, Transformable Soft Pneumatic Actua…
Aging populations and the rising prevalence of neurological and musculoskeletal disorders increase the demand for wearable mobility assistive devices that are effective, comfortable, and anatomically compatible. Many existing systems use…
In assistive robots, compliant actuator is a key component in establishing safe and satisfactory physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). The performance of compliant actuators largely depends on the stiffness of the elastic element.…
Bio-inspired soft robots have already shown the ability to handle uncertainty and adapt to unstructured environments. However, their availability is partially restricted by time-consuming, costly and highly supervised design-fabrication…
Soft robots are known for their ability to perform tasks with great adaptability, enabled by their distributed, non-uniform stiffness and actuation. Bending is the most fundamental motion for soft robot design, but creating robust, and…
This paper presents the design, control, and applications of a multi-segment soft robotic arm. In order to design a soft arm with large load capacity, several design principles are proposed by analyzing two kinds of buckling issues, under…
Robotic arms are essential to modern industries, however, their adaptability to unstructured environments remains limited. Soft robotic arms, particularly those actuated pneumatically, offer greater adaptability in unstructured environments…
The design of robots that are light, soft, powerful is a grand challenge. Since they can easily adapt to dynamic environments, soft robotic systems have the potential of changing the status-quo of bulky robotics. A crucial component of soft…
Modulating the stiffness of soft actuators is crucial for improving the efficiency of interaction with the environment. However, current stiffness modulation mechanisms are hard to achieve high lateral stiffness and a wide range of bending…
We propose a novel tri-fingered soft robotic gripper with decoupled stiffness and shape control capability for performing adaptive grasping with minimum system complexity. The proposed soft fingers adaptively conform to object shapes…
Due to their inherent compliance, soft robots are more versatile than rigid linked robots when they interact with their environment, such as object manipulation or biomimetic motion, and considered the key element in introducing robots to…
Robots built from soft materials can alter their shape and size in a particular profile. This shape-changing ability could be extremely helpful for rescue robots and those operating in unknown terrains and environments. In changing shape,…
Stroke-induced motor impairment often results in substantial loss of upper-limb function, creating a strong demand for rehabilitation robots that enable safe and transparent physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). Variable stiffness…
This paper presents a novel soft robotic system for a deformable mannequin that can be employed to physically realize the 3D geometry of different human bodies. The soft membrane on a mannequin is deformed by inflating several curved…
The recent advancements in machine learning techniques have steered us towards the data-driven design of products. Motivated by this objective, the present study proposes an automated design methodology that employs data-driven methods to…
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…
In this work we present a framework that is capable of accurately representing soft robotic actuators in a multiphysics environment in real-time. We propose a constraint-based dynamics model of a 1-dimensional pneumatic soft actuator that…
Soft electrothermal actuators are of great interest in diverse application domains for their simplicity, compliance, and ease of control. However, the very nature of thermally induced mechanical actuation sets inherent operation…
This paper presents a novel actuator system combining a twisted string actuator (TSA) with a winch mechanism. Relative to traditional hydraulic and pneumatic systems in robotics, TSAs are compact and lightweight but face limitations in…
This paper presents a passive control method for multiple degrees of freedom in a soft pneumatic robot through the combination of flow resistor tubes with series inflatable actuators. We designed and developed these 3D printed resistors…
Soft robotics is a rapidly growing field that spans the fields of chemistry, materials science, and engineering. Due to the diverse background of the field, there have been contrasting naming schemes such as 'intelligent', 'smart' and…