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Three-dimensional (3D) printing has emerged as a powerful tool for material, food, and life science research and development, where the technology democratization necessitates the advancement of open-source platforms. Herein, we developed a…
New additive manufacturing methods are needed to realize more complex soft robots. One example is soft fluidic robotics, which exploits fluidic power and stiffness gradients. Porous structures are an interesting type for this approach, as…
Off-the-shelf fused filament fabrication 3D printers are widely accessible and convenient, yet they exhibit quality loss at high speeds due to dynamic mis-synchronization between printhead motion and material extrusion systems, notably…
3D printing is rapidly becoming an effective means of prototyping and creating custom consumer goods. The most common method for printing a polymer melt is fused filament fabrication (FFF), and involves extrusion of a thermoplastic material…
Inflated-beam soft robots, such as tip-everting vine robots, can control curvature by contracting one beam side via pneumatic actuation. This work develops a general finite element modeling approach to characterize their bending. The model…
Soft robots offer an alternative approach to manipulate inside the constrained space while maintaining the safe interaction with the external environment. Due to its adaptable compliance characteristic, external contact force can easily…
Significant improvements to the production rate of additive manufacturing (AM) technologies are essential to their cost-effectiveness and competitiveness with traditional processing routes. Moreover, much faster AM processes, in combination…
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…
Soft pneumatic actuators have seen applications in many soft robotic systems, and their pressure-driven nature presents unique challenges and opportunities for controlling their motion. In this work, we present a new concept: designing and…
Aerial robots have garnered significant attention due to their potential applications in various industries, such as inspection, search and rescue, and drone delivery. Successful missions often depend on the ability of these robots to grasp…
3D printing using robots has garnered significant interest in manufacturing and construction in recent years. A robot's versatility paired with the design freedom of 3D printing offers promising opportunities for how parts and structures…
Laminate mechanisms are a reliable concept in producing lowcost robots for educational and commercial purposes. These mechanisms are produced using low-cost manufacturing techniques which have improved significantly during recent years and…
Textile pneumatic actuators can provide useful wearable haptic feedback when embedded in gloves, armbands, and other smart garments. Here we investigate actuators fabricated from thermoplastic coated textiles. We measure the effects of…
Conformable robotic systems are attractive for applications in which they can be used to actuate structures with large surface areas, to provide forces through wearable garments, or to realize autonomous robotic systems. We present a new…
Continuum and soft robots can leverage complex actuator shapes to take on useful shapes while actuating only a few of their many degrees of freedom. Continuum robots that also grow increase the range of potential shapes that can be actuated…
Due to their ability to move without sliding relative to their environment, soft growing robots are attractive for deploying distributed sensor networks in confined spaces. Sensing of the state of such robots would also add to their…
Ionic polymer actuators, in essence, consist of ion exchange polymers sandwiched between layers of electrodes. They have recently gained recognition as promising candidates for soft actuators due to their lightweight nature, noise-free…
Foams are versatile by nature and ubiquitous in a wide range of applications, including padding, insulation, and acoustic dampening. Previous work established that foams 3D printed via Viscous Thread Printing (VTP) can in principle combine…
Layered manufacturing inherently suffers from staircase defects along surfaces that are gently slopped with respect to the build direction. Reducing the slice thickness improves the situation but never resolves it completely as flat layers…
This paper presents a vision-based sensing approach for a soft linear actuator, which is equipped with an integrated camera. The proposed vision-based sensing pipeline predicts the three-dimensional position of a point of interest on the…