Related papers: Stiffness-Tuneable Limb Segment with Flexible Spin…
The purpose of this research is to design, fabricate and test a tendon driven a continuum soft robot with three modular segments, each of which has a tunable stiffness enabled by layer jamming technology. Compared with previous studies, the…
Through the implementation of reconfigurability to achieve flexibility and adaptation to tasks by morphology changes rather than by increasing the number of joints, malleable robots present advantages over traditional serial robot arms in…
Humans possess a remarkable ability to react to unpredictable perturbations through immediate mechanical responses, which harness the visco-elastic properties of muscles to maintain balance. Inspired by this behaviour, we propose a novel…
This paper presents a novel, modular, cable-driven soft robotic arm featuring multi-segment reconfigurability. The proposed architecture enables a stackable system with independent segment control, allowing scalable adaptation to diverse…
Soft robots are known for their ability to perform tasks with great adaptability, enabled by their distributed, non-uniform stiffness and actuation. Bending is the most fundamental motion for soft robot design, but creating robust, and…
When we develop wearable assistive devices comfort and support are two main issues needed to be considered. In conventional design approaches, the degree of freedom of wearer's joint movement tends to be oversimplified. Accordingly, the…
Fibre jamming is a relatively new and understudied soft robotic mechanism that has previously found success when used in stiffness-tuneable arms and fingers. However, to date researchers have not fully taken advantage of the freedom offered…
Animals can finely modulate their leg stiffness to interact with complex terrains and absorb sudden shocks. In feats like leaping and sprinting, animals demonstrate a sophisticated interplay of opposing muscle pairs that actively modulate…
This chapter is about the fundamentals of fabrication, control, and human-robot interaction of a new type of collaborative robotic manipulators, called malleable robots, which are based on adjustable architectures of varying stiffness for…
Inflated continuum robots are promising for a variety of navigation tasks, but controlling their motion with a small number of actuators is challenging. These inflated beam robots tend to buckle under compressive loads, producing extremely…
Robotic systems operating in unstructured environments require the ability to switch between compliant and rigid states to perform diverse tasks such as adaptive grasping, high-force manipulation, shape holding, and navigation in…
This paper presents a robust control scheme for flexible link robotic manipulators, which is based on considering the flexible mechanical structure as a system with slow (rigid) and fast (flexible) modes that can be controlled separately.…
Achieving human-like dexterity in robotic grippers remains an open challenge, particularly in ensuring robust manipulation in uncertain environments. Soft robotic hands try to address this by leveraging passive compliance, a characteristic…
Biomimicry has played a pivotal role in robotics. In contrast to rigid robots, bio-inspired robots exhibit an inherent compliance, facilitating versatile movements and operations in constrained spaces. The robot implementation in…
Active control of the shape of soft robots is challenging. Despite having an infinite number of passive degrees of freedom (DOFs), soft robots typically only have a few actively controllable DOFs, limited by the number of degrees of…
Back injuries are the most prevalent work-related musculoskeletal disorders and represent a major cause of disability. Although innovations in wearable robots aim to alleviate this hazard, the majority of existing exoskeletons are obtrusive…
This paper presents a new stiffness modulation mechanism that enables infinite-range stiffness modulation in a fast manner. The proposed stiffness modulation mechanism can help improve many robot environment interaction applications such as…
Follow-the-leader (FTL) motion is essential for continuum robots operating in fragile and confined environments. It allows the robot to exert minimal force on its surroundings, reducing the risk of damage. This paper presents a novel design…
Inflatable structures used in soft robotics applications exhibit unique characteristics. In particular, the tip-extension structure, which grows from the tip, can grow without friction against the environment. However, these inflatable…
Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…