Related papers: A Soft Continuum Robot with Self-Controllable Vari…
State estimation of robotic systems is essential to implementing feedback controllers, which usually provide better robustness to modeling uncertainties than open-loop controllers. However, state estimation of soft robots is very…
Dynamic quadrupedal locomotion over rough terrains reveals remarkable progress over the last few decades. Small-scale quadruped robots are adequately flexible and adaptable to traverse uneven terrains along sagittal direction, such as…
Multisection continuum arms offer complementary characteristics to those of traditional rigid-bodied robots. Inspired by biological appendages, such as elephant trunks and octopus arms, these robots trade rigidity for compliance, accuracy…
Snake robots composed of alternating single-axis pitch and yaw joints have many internal degrees of freedom, which make them capable of versatile three-dimensional locomotion. In motion planning process, snake robot motions are often…
Simulating soft robots in cluttered environments remains an open problem due to the challenge of capturing complex dynamics and interactions with the environment. Furthermore, fast simulation is desired for quickly exploring robot behaviors…
We present controllers that enable mobile robots to persistently monitor or sweep a changing environment. The changing environment is modeled as a field which grows in locations that are not within range of a robot, and decreases in…
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…
Robot simulators are indispensable tools across many fields, and recent research has significantly improved their functionality by incorporating additional gradient information. However, existing differentiable robot simulators suffer from…
Evolving virtual creatures is a field with a rich history and recently it has been getting more attention, especially in the soft robotics domain. The compliance of soft materials endows soft robots with complex behavior, but it also makes…
High-speed locomotion of animals gives them tremendous advantages in exploring, hunting, and escaping from predators in varying environments. Enlightened by the fast-running gait of mammals like cheetahs and wolves, we designed and…
Continuum robots are typically slender and flexible with infinite freedoms in theory, which poses a challenge for their control and application. The shape sensing of continuum robots is vital to realise accuracy control. This letter…
Soft robotics aims to develop robots able to adapt their behavior across a wide range of unstructured and unknown environments. A critical challenge of soft robotic control is that nonlinear dynamics often result in complex behaviors hard…
In this paper, we design feedback control laws for soft robots modelled using the Cosserat rod, which is spatially discretised using the Piecewise Constant Strain (PCS) approach. The PCS approach transforms the nonlinear PDEs describing the…
Despite recent advances in robust locomotion, bipedal robots operating in the real world remain at risk of falling. While most research focuses on preventing such events, we instead concentrate on the phenomenon of falling itself.…
Passive deformation due to compliance is a commonly used benefit of soft robots, providing opportunities to achieve robust actuation with few active degrees of freedom. Soft growing robots in particular have shown promise in navigation of…
Tool-based scooping is vital in robot-assisted tasks, enabling interaction with objects of varying sizes, shapes, and material states. Recent studies have shown that flexible, reconfigurable soft robotic end-effectors can adapt their shape…
Spherical robots can conduct surveillance in hostile, cluttered environments without being damaged, as their protective shell can safely house sensors such as cameras. However, lateral oscillations, also known as wobble, occur when these…
Tree fruit growers around the world are facing labor shortages for critical operations, including harvest and pruning. There is a great interest in developing robotic solutions for these labor-intensive tasks, but current efforts have been…
In nature, a variety of limbless locomotion patterns flourish from the small or basic life form (Escherichia coli, the amoeba, etc.) to the large or intelligent creatures (e.g., slugs, starfishes, earthworms, octopuses, jellyfishes, and…
This paper presents design and control innovations of wearable robots that tackle two barriers to widespread adoption of powered exoskeletons, namely restriction of human movement and versatile control of wearable co-robot systems. First,…