Related papers: Hold 'em and Fold 'em: Towards Human-scale, Feedba…
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…
Although soft robots show safer interactions with their environment than traditional robots, soft mechanisms and actuators still have significant potential for damage or degradation particularly during unmodeled contact. This article…
Endowing robots with tactile capabilities opens up new possibilities for their interaction with the environment, including the ability to handle fragile and/or soft objects. In this work, we equip the robot gripper with low-cost…
Accurate shape sensing, only achievable through distributed proprioception, is a key requirement for closed-loop control of soft robots. Low-cost power efficient optoelectronic sensors manufactured from flexible materials represent a…
Soft pneumatic legged robots show promise in their ability to traverse a range of different types of terrain, including natural unstructured terrain met in applications like precision agriculture. They can adapt their body morphology to the…
In this project, we focus on human-robot interaction in caregiving scenarios like bathing, where physical contact is inevitable and necessary for proper task execution because force must be applied to the skin. Using finite element…
For soft robots to work effectively in human-centered environments, they need to be able to estimate their state and external interactions based on (proprioceptive) sensors. Estimating disturbances allows a soft robot to perform desirable…
We present a user-friendly interface to teleoperate a soft robot manipulator in a complex environment. Key components of the system include a manipulator with a grasping end-effector that grows via tip eversion, gesture-based control, and…
Classical rigid-bodied robotic systems are presented with proven success in theoretical development and industrial applications, are recently challenged by the emergence of soft robotics due to a growing need in physical human-robot…
Natural organisms can convert environmental stimuli into sensory feedback to regulate their body and realize active adaptivity. However, realizing such a feedback-regulation mechanism in synthetic material systems remains a grand challenge.…
This paper presents the application of a learning control approach for the realization of a fast and reliable pick-and-place application with a spherical soft robotic arm. The arm is characterized by a lightweight design and exhibits…
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…
Regulating contact forces with high precision is crucial for grasping and manipulating fragile or deformable objects. We aim to utilize the dexterity of human hands to regulate the contact forces for robotic hands and exploit human…
Robot-to-human object handover is an essential skill for robot assistants, from serving drinks at home to passing surgical tools in the operating room. We expect robots to perform handover robustly -- to release the object only after a firm…
Planning and execution of agile locomotion maneuvers have been a longstanding challenge in legged robotics. It requires to derive motion plans and local feedback policies in real-time to handle the nonholonomy of the kinetic momenta. To…
The manipulation of large objects and safe operation in the vicinity of humans are key capabilities of a general purpose domestic robotic assistant. We present the design of a soft, tactile-sensing humanoid upper-body robot and demonstrate…
Human-humanoid collaboration shows significant promise for applications in healthcare, domestic assistance, and manufacturing. While compliant robot-human collaboration has been extensively developed for robotic arms, enabling compliant…
Dexterous manipulation of objects through fine control of physical contacts is essential for many important tasks of daily living. A fundamental ability underlying fine contact control is compliant control, \textit{i.e.}, controlling the…
In this article, the control problem of one section pneumatically actuated soft robotic arm is investigated in detail. To date, extensive prior work has been done in soft robotics kinematics and dynamics modeling. Proper controller designs…
This work represents an initial benchmark of a large-scale soft robot performing physical, collaborative manipulation of a long, extended object with a human partner. The robot consists of a pneumatically-actuated, three-link continuum soft…