Related papers: Embodying Control in Soft Multistable Robots from …
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
This article presents a novel SOFA based finite element method for the soft body modeling and the corresponding dynamic simulation and control of a pneumatic morphing soft quadrotor. The proposed modeling preserves the physical…
Continuum robots with variable compliance have gained significant attention due to their adaptability in unstructured environments. Among various stiffness modulation techniques, layer jamming (LJ) provides a simple yet effective approach…
Soft and soft-rigid hybrid robots are inherently underactuated and operate under tight actuator limits, making task-space control with stability guarantees challenging. Common nonlinear strategies for soft robots (e.g., those based on PD…
Humanoid robots deployed in industrial environments are required to perform load-carrying transportation tasks that tightly couple locomotion and manipulation. However, achieving stable and robust locomotion under varying payloads and…
Harnessing the rich nonlinear dynamics of highly-deformable materials has the potential to unlock the next generation of functional smart materials and devices. However, unlocking such potential requires effective strategies to spatially…
Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…
When modeling complex robot systems such as branched robots, whose kinematic structures are a tree, current techniques often require modeling the whole structure from scratch, even when partial models for the branches are available. This…
Machines that mimic humans have inspired scientists for centuries. Bio-inspired soft robotic hands are a good example of such an endeavor, featuring intrinsic material compliance and continuous motion to deal with uncertainty and adapt to…
Purpose of review: We review recent advances in algorithmic development and validation for modeling and control of soft robots leveraging the Koopman operator theory. Recent findings: We identify the following trends in recent research…
Soft robots offer unmatched adaptability and safety in unstructured environments, yet their compliant, high-dimensional, and nonlinear dynamics make modeling for control notoriously difficult. Existing data-driven approaches often fail to…
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…
It is prevalent in contemporary AI and robotics to separately postulate a brain modeled by neural networks and employ it to learn intelligent and adaptive behavior. While this method has worked very well for many types of tasks, it isn't…
Recently, researchers have explored control methods that embrace nonlinear dynamic coupling instead of suppressing it. Such designs leverage dynamical coupling for communication between different parts of the robot. Morphological…
Mechanical compliance is a key design parameter for dynamic contact-rich manipulation, affecting task success and safety robustness over contact geometry variation. Design of soft robotic structures, such as compliant fingers, requires…
Classically, the development of humanoid robots has been sequential and iterative. Such bottom-up design procedures rely heavily on intuition and are often biased by the designer's experience. Exploiting the non-linear coupled design space…
Stiffness variation and real-time position feedback are critical for any robotic system but most importantly for active and wearable devices to interact with the user and environment. Currently, for compact sizes, there is a lack of…
This paper investigates a distributed formation control problem for networked robots, with the global objective of achieving predefined time-varying formations in an environment with obstacles. A novel fixed-time behavioral approach is…
Magnetic response soft robot realizes programmable shape regulation with the help of magnetic field and produces various actions. The shape control of magnetic soft robot is based on the magnetic anisotropy caused by the orderly…
Control policy learning for modular robot locomotion has previously been limited to proprioceptive feedback and flat terrain. This paper develops policies for modular systems with vision traversing more challenging environments. These…