Related papers: A Soft Continuum Robot with Self-Controllable Vari…
Soft robotics is an emerging field of research where the robot body is composed of compliant and soft materials. It allows the body to bend, twist, and deform to move or to adapt its shape to the environment for grasping, all of which are…
Soft robots are robotic systems made of deformable materials and exhibit unique flexibility that can be exploited for complex environments and tasks. However, their control problem has been considered a challenging subject because they are…
Shape change enables new capabilities for robots. One class of robots capable of dramatic shape change is soft growing "vine" robots. These robots usually feature global actuation methods for bending that limit them to simple,…
Continuum robots have the potential to enable new applications in medicine, inspection, and countless other areas due to their unique shape, compliance, and size. Excellent progess has been made in the mechanical design and dynamic…
Tensegrity structures are lightweight, can undergo large deformations, and have outstanding robustness capabilities. These unique properties inspired roboticists to investigate their use. However, the morphological design, control,…
Snake robots are characterized by their ability to navigate through small spaces and loose terrain by utilizing efficient cyclic forms of locomotion. Soft snake robots are a subset of these robots which utilize soft, compliant actuators to…
The waist plays a crucial role in the agile movement of many animals in nature. It provides the torso with additional degrees of freedom and flexibility, inspiring researchers to incorporate this biological feature into robotic structures…
Growing soft materials which follow a 3D path in space are critical to applications such as search and rescue and minimally invasive surgery. Here, we present a concept for a single-input growing multi-stable soft material, based on a…
Soft, growing inflated beam robots, also known as everting vine robots, have previously been shown to navigate confined spaces with ease. Less is known about their ability to navigate three-dimensional open spaces where they have the…
In the recent past, several sampling-based algorithms have been proposed to compute trajectories that are collision-free and dynamically-feasible. However, the outputs of such algorithms are notoriously jagged. In this paper, by focusing on…
The robotic manipulation of deformable linear objects has shown great potential in a wide range of real-world applications. However, it presents many challenges due to the objects' complex nonlinearity and high-dimensional configuration. In…
We introduce shape-changing swarm robots. A swarm of self-transformable robots can both individually and collectively change their configuration to display information, actuate objects, act as tangible controllers, visualize data, and…
This paper presents a soft earthworm robot that is capable of both efficient locomotion and obstacle avoidance. The robot is designed to replicate the unique locomotion mechanisms of earthworms, which enable them to move through narrow and…
Modularity in robotics holds great potential. In principle, modular robots can be disassembled and reassembled in different robots, and possibly perform new tasks. Nevertheless, actually exploiting modularity is yet an unsolved problem:…
Safe motion planning algorithms are necessary for deploying autonomous robots in unstructured environments. Motion plans must be safe to ensure that the robot does not harm humans or damage any nearby objects. Generating these motion plans…
Three-dimensional shape sensing in soft and continuum robotics is a crucial aspect for stable actuation and control in fields such as Minimally Invasive surgery, as the estimation of complex curvatures while using continuum robotic tools is…
Soft robotic snakes (SRSs) have a unique combination of continuous and compliant properties that allow them to imitate the complex movements of biological snakes. Despite the previous attempts to develop SRSs, many have been limited to…
Finite element methods have been successfully used to develop physics-based models of soft robots that capture the nonlinear dynamic behavior induced by continuous deformation. These high-fidelity models are therefore ideal for designing…
Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…
Soft robots offer adaptability and safe interaction with complex environments. Rapid prototyping kits that allow soft robots to be assembled easily will allow different geometries to be explored quickly to suit different environments or to…