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Soft grippers have excellent adaptability for a variety of objects and tasks. Jamming-based variable stiffness materials can further increase soft grippers' gripping force and capacity. Previous universal grippers enabled by granular…
Robot grasping is subject to an inherent tradeoff: Grippers with a large span typically take a longer time to close, and fast grippers usually cover a small span. However, many practical applications of soft grippers require the ability to…
Soft robotic grippers are shown to be high effective for grasping unstructured objects with simple sensing and control strategies. However, they are still limited by their speed, sensing capabilities and actuation mechanism. Hence, their…
Biological systems, such as the octopus, exhibit masterful cross-scale manipulation by adaptively reconfiguring their entire form, a capability that remains elusive in robotics. Conventional soft grippers, while compliant, are mostly…
Grasping objects with diverse mechanical properties, such as heavy, slippery, or fragile items, remains a significant challenge in robotics. Conventional rigid grippers typically rely on increasing the normal forces to secure an object,…
Grasping is a core task in robotics with various applications. However, most current implementations are primarily designed for rigid items, and their performance drops considerably when handling fragile or deformable materials that require…
Underwater soft grippers exhibit potential for applications such as monitoring, research, and object retrieval. However, existing underwater gripping techniques frequently cause disturbances to ecosystems. In response to this challenge, we…
Grasping deformable objects with varying stiffness remains a significant challenge in robotics. Estimating the local stiffness of a target object is important for determining an optimal grasp pose that enables stable pickup without damaging…
Robotic grasping requires safe force interaction to prevent a grasped object from being damaged or slipping out of the hand. In this vein, this paper proposes an integrated framework for grasping with formal safety guarantees based on…
Robotic manipulation of flexible objects is widely required in both industrial and service applications. Among such objects, paper-like materials exhibit distinct mechanical characteristics compared to cloth, being more sensitive to…
Grasping objects whose physical properties are unknown is still a great challenge in robotics. Most solutions rely entirely on visual data to plan the best grasping strategy. However, to match human abilities and be able to reliably pick…
This paper presents a design methodology of a hydraulically-driven soft robotic gripper for grasping a large and heavy object -- approximately 10 - 20 kg with 20 - 30 cm diameter. Most existing soft grippers are pneumatically actuated with…
Soft grippers are gaining significant attention in the manipulation of elastic objects, where it is required to handle soft and unstructured objects which are vulnerable to deformations. A crucial problem is to estimate the physical…
Contrary to the stunning feats observed in birds of prey, aerial manipulation and grasping with flying robots still lack versatility and agility. Conventional approaches using rigid manipulators require precise positioning and are subject…
Soft robots are powerful tools for manipulating delicate objects, yet their adoption is hindered by two gaps: the lack of integrated tactile sensing and sensor signal distortion caused by actuator deformations. This paper addresses these…
External collisions to robot actuators typically pose risks to grasping circular objects. This work presents a vision-based sensing module capable of detecting collisions to maintain stable grasping with a soft gripper system. The system…
This paper presents a control scheme for force sensitive, gentle grasping with a Pisa/IIT anthropomorphic SoftHand equipped with a miniaturised version of the TacTip optical tactile sensor on all five fingertips. The tactile sensors provide…
This paper presents a soft robot finger capable of adaptive-twist deformation to grasp objects by wrapping them. For a soft hand to grasp and pick-up one object from densely contained multiple objects, a soft finger requires the…
Conventional fluid-driven soft grippers typically depend on external sources, which limit portability and long-term autonomy. This work introduces a self-contained soft gripper with fixed size that operates solely through internal liquid…
Grasping, in both biological and engineered mechanisms, can be highly sensitive to the gripper and object morphology, as well as perception, and motion planning. Here we circumvent the need for feedback or precise planning by using an array…