Related papers: Using neuroevolution for designing soft medical de…
Neuroevolution, a field that draws inspiration from the evolution of brains in nature, harnesses evolutionary algorithms to construct artificial neural networks. It bears a number of intriguing capabilities that are typically inaccessible…
Morphological regeneration is an important feature that highlights the environmental adaptive capacity of biological systems. Lack of this regenerative capacity significantly limits the resilience of machines and the environments they can…
Rigid-bodied robots often lack compliance needed to adapt to unstructured environments, while fully soft robots, though highly adaptable, struggle with scalability and load capacity. In nature, musculoskeletal systems balance strength and…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
Evolutionary robotics aims to automatically design autonomous adaptive morphological robots that can evolve to accomplish a specific task while adapting to environmental changes. Soft robotics have demonstrated the feasibility of…
Neuroevolution methods evolve the weights of a neural network, and in some cases the topology, but little work has been done to analyze the effect of evolving the activation functions of individual nodes on network size, which is important…
Task-driven design of soft robots requires models that are physically accurate and computationally efficient, while remaining transferable across actuator designs and task scenarios. However, existing modeling approaches typically face a…
The success of deep learning depends on finding an architecture to fit the task. As deep learning has scaled up to more challenging tasks, the architectures have become difficult to design by hand. This paper proposes an automated method,…
Different subsystems of organisms adapt over many time scales, such as rapid changes in the nervous system (learning), slower morphological and neurological change over the lifetime of the organism (postnatal development), and change over…
Soft growing robots are novel devices that mimic plant-like growth for navigation in cluttered or dangerous environments. Their ability to adapt to surroundings, combined with advancements in actuation and manufacturing technologies, allows…
This paper addresses the challenge of co-designing morphology and control in soft robots via a novel neural network evolution approach. We propose an innovative method to implicitly dual-encode soft robots, thus facilitating the…
Dynamic control of a soft-body robot to deliver complex behaviors with low-dimensional actuation inputs is challenging. In this paper, we present a computational approach to automatically generate versatile, underactuated control policies…
Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…
Robotic exoskeletons can enhance human strength and aid people with physical disabilities. However, designing them to ensure safety and optimal performance presents significant challenges. Developing exoskeletons should incorporate specific…
Biological systems are very robust to morphological damage, but artificial systems (robots) are currently not. In this paper we present a system based on neural cellular automata, in which locomoting robots are evolved and then given the…
Hyperparameters and learning algorithms for neuromorphic hardware are usually chosen by hand. In contrast, the hyperparameters and learning algorithms of networks of neurons in the brain, which they aim to emulate, have been optimized…
Robotic assistance has significantly improved the outcomes of open microsurgery and rigid endoscopic surgery, however is yet to make an impact in flexible endoscopic neurosurgery. Some of the most common intracranial procedures for…
Soft robots have gained significant attention due to their flexibility and safety, particularly in human-centric applications. The co-design of structure and controller in soft robotics has presented a longstanding challenge owing to the…
Designing robots by hand can be costly and time consuming, especially if the robots have to be created with novel materials, or be robust to internal or external changes. In order to create robots automatically, without the need for human…
Aging populations and the rising prevalence of neurological and musculoskeletal disorders increase the demand for wearable mobility assistive devices that are effective, comfortable, and anatomically compatible. Many existing systems use…