Related papers: Adaptive Stiffness: A Biomimetic Robotic System wi…
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…
Future robots will navigate perilous, remote environments with resilience and autonomy. Researchers have proposed building robots with compliant bodies to enhance robustness, but this approach often sacrifices the autonomous capabilities…
Tensegrity structures are lightweight, can undergo large deformations, and have outstanding robustness capabilities. These unique properties inspired roboticists to investigate their use. However, the morphological design, control,…
Living organisms intertwine soft (e.g., muscle) and hard (e.g., bones) materials, giving them an intrinsic flexibility and resiliency often lacking in conventional rigid robots. The emerging field of soft robotics seeks to harness these…
Most traditional robotic mechanisms feature inelastic joints that are unable to robustly handle large deformations and off-axis moments. As a result, the applied loads are transferred rigidly throughout the entire structure. The…
There is a surge of research interest in the field of tensegrity robotics. Robots developed under this paradigm provide many advantages and have distinguishing features in terms of structural compliance, dexterity, safety, and weight…
Tensegrity robots, composed of rigid struts and elastic tendons, provide impact resistance, low mass, and adaptability to unstructured terrain. Their compliance and complex, coupled dynamics, however, present modeling and control…
In this paper, we present a light-weight, multi- axis compliant tenegrity joint that is biologically inspired by the human elbow. This tensegrity elbow actuates by shortening and lengthening cable in a method inspired by muscular actuation…
Piping inspection robots play an essential role for industries as they can reduce human effort and pose a lesser risk to their lives. Generally, the locomotion techniques of these robots can be classified into mechanical and bioinspired. By…
The dynamical properties of tensegrity robots give them appealing ruggedness and adaptability, but present major challenges with respect to locomotion control. Due to high-dimensionality and complex contact responses, data-driven approaches…
Passive elastic elements can contribute to stability, energetic efficiency, and impact absorption in both biological and robotic systems. They also add dynamical complexity which makes them more challenging to model and control. The impact…
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…
Robotic tails can enhance the stability and maneuverability of mobile robots, but current designs face a trade-off between the power of rigid systems and the safety of soft ones. Rigid tails generate large inertial effects but pose risks in…
The impressive capabilities of humans to robustly perform manipulation relies on compliant interactions, enabled through the structure and materials spatially distributed in our hands. We propose by mimicking this distributed compliance in…
Robotic arms built from stiffness-adjustable, continuously bending segments serially connected with revolute joints have the ability to change their mechanical architecture and workspace, thus allowing high flexibility and adaptation to…
We introduce SoftMimic, a framework for learning compliant whole-body control policies for humanoid robots from example motions. Imitating human motions with reinforcement learning allows humanoids to quickly learn new skills, but existing…
In this paper, we introduce a design principle to develop novel soft modular robots based on tensegrity structures and inspired by the cytoskeleton of living cells. We describe a novel strategy to realize tensegrity structures using planar…
Advancements in the domain of physical human-robot interaction (pHRI) have tremendously improved the ability of humans and robots to communicate, collaborate, and coexist. In particular, compliant robotic systems offer many characteristics…
Continuum robots have gained widespread popularity due to their inherent compliance and flexibility, particularly their adjustable levels of stiffness for various application scenarios. Despite efforts to dynamic modeling and control…
Adaptive morphogenetic robots adapt their morphology and control policies to meet changing tasks and environmental conditions. Many such systems leverage soft components, which enable shape morphing but also introduce simulation and control…