Related papers: A Multimodal Soft Gripper with Variable Stiffness …
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…
Although the multi-jointed underactuated manipulator is highly dexterous, its grasping capacity does not match that of the parallel jaw gripper. This work introduces a fractal gripper to enhance the grasping capacity of multi-joint…
Soft pneumatic actuators enable safe human-machine interaction with lightweight and powerful applied parts. On the other side, they suffer design limitations as regards complex actuation patterns, including minimum bending radii,…
Grip surfaces with tunable friction can actively modify contact conditions, enabling transitions between higher- and lower-friction states for grasp adjustment. Friction can be increased to grip securely and then decreased to gently release…
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…
Realizing high-performance soft robotic grippers is challenging because of the inherent limitations of the soft actuators and artificial muscles that drive them, including low force output, small actuation range, and poor compactness.…
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…
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…
Grasping objects across vastly different sizes and physical states-including both solids and liquids-with a single robotic gripper remains a fundamental challenge in soft robotics. We present the Everything-Grasping (EG) Gripper, a soft…
Recently, magnetorheological elastomers have become an interesting smart material with many new designs for robotics. A variety of applications have been built with magnetorheological elastomers, such as vibration absorbers, actuators, or…
Granular jamming has recently become popular in soft robotics with widespread applications including industrial gripping, surgical robotics and haptics. Previous work has investigated the use of various techniques that exploit the nature of…
This paper is a summary of the recently accomplished research work on flexible gripping systems. The goal is to develop a gripper which can be used for a great amount of geometrically variant workpieces. The economic aspect is of particular…
Robotic hands with soft surfaces can perform stable grasping, but the high friction of the soft surfaces makes it difficult to release objects, or to perform operations that require sliding. To solve this issue, we previously developed a…
Separating thin, flexible layers that must be individually grasped is a common but challenging manipulation primitive for most off-the-shelf grippers. A prominent example arises in clinical settings: the opening of sterile flat pouches for…
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…
The application of granular jamming in soft robotics is a recent and promising new technology offer exciting possibilities for creating higher performance robotic devices. Granular jamming is achieved via the application of a vacuum…
This paper introduces GAgent: an Gripping Agent designed for open-world environments that provides advanced cognitive abilities via VLM agents and flexible grasping abilities with variable stiffness soft grippers. GAgent comprises three…
Granular grippers can manipulate a wide variety of objects, but need to be pressed on the object to conform to it. If the object is placed on unstable ground, e.g., on sand or water, this step might cause the object to sink or move away…
Grasping using an aerial robot can have many applications ranging from infrastructure inspection and maintenance to precise agriculture. However, aerial grasping is a challenging problem since the robot has to maintain an accurate position…
Granular jamming has been identified as a fundamental mechanism for the operation of robotic grippers. In this work, we show, that soft particles like expanded polystyrene beads lead to significantly larger gripping forces in comparison to…