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Developing physically assistive robots capable of dressing assistance has the potential to significantly improve the lives of the elderly and disabled population. However, most robotics dressing strategies considered a single robot only,…
Assistive robotic arms enable users with physical disabilities to perform everyday tasks without relying on a caregiver. Unfortunately, the very dexterity that makes these arms useful also makes them challenging to teleoperate: the robot…
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…
For robot arms to perform everyday tasks in unstructured environments, these robots must be able to manipulate a diverse range of objects. Today's robots often grasp objects with either soft grippers or rigid end-effectors. However, purely…
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…
Robot-assisted feeding in household environments is challenging because it requires robots to generate trajectories that effectively bring food items of varying shapes and sizes into the mouth while making sure the user is comfortable. Our…
Labor shortages in the United States are impacting a number of industries including the meat processing sector. Collaborative technologies that work alongside humans while increasing production abilities may support the industry by…
This paper proposes a novel robotic hand design for assembly tasks. The idea is to combine two simple grippers -- an inner gripper which is used for precise alignment, and an outer gripper which is used for stable holding. Conventional…
Object grasping is an important ability required for various robot tasks. In particular, tasks that require precise force adjustments during operation, such as grasping an unknown object or using a grasped tool, are difficult for humans to…
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…
Assistive robots enable people with disabilities to conduct everyday tasks on their own. However, these tasks can be complex, containing both coarse reaching motions and fine-grained manipulation. For example, when eating, not only does one…
Adaptation to various scene configurations and object properties, stability and dexterity in robotic grasping manipulation is far from explored. This work presents an origami-based shape morphing fingertip design to actively tackle the…
Humans excel in complex long-horizon soft body manipulation tasks via flexible tool use: bread baking requires a knife to slice the dough and a rolling pin to flatten it. Often regarded as a hallmark of human cognition, tool use in…
In everyday life, we often find that we can maintain an object's equilibrium on a tray by adjusting its orientation. Building upon this observation and extending the method we previously proposed to suppress sloshing in a moving vessel,…
Robot-assisted feeding has the potential to improve the quality of life for individuals with mobility limitations who are unable to feed themselves independently. However, there exists a large gap between the homogeneous, curated plates…
Robot-assisted feeding systems enhance the independence of individuals with motor impairments and alleviate caregiver burden. While existing systems predominantly rely on software-based safety features to mitigate risks during unforeseen…
We propose a novel tri-fingered soft robotic gripper with decoupled stiffness and shape control capability for performing adaptive grasping with minimum system complexity. The proposed soft fingers adaptively conform to object shapes…
Without finger function, people with C5-7 spinal cord injury (SCI) regularly utilize wrist extension to passively close the fingers and thumb together for grasping. Wearable assistive grasping devices often focus on this familiar…
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…
Scrubbing surfaces is a physically demanding and time-intensive task. Removing adhered contamination requires substantial friction generated through pressure and torque or high lateral forces. Rigid robotic manipulators, while capable of…