Related papers: Bio-inspired circular soft actuators for simulatin…
Discrete simulation methods are efficient tools to investigate the complex behaviors of complex fluids made of either dry granular materials or dilute suspensions. By contrast, materials made of soft and/or concentrated units (emulsions,…
Soft robots have become increasingly popular for complex manipulation tasks requiring gentle and safe contact. However, their softness makes accurate control challenging, and high-fidelity sensing is a prerequisite to adequate control…
Recently, soft actuator-based exosuits have gained interest, due to their high strength-to-weight ratio, inherent safety, and low cost. We present a novel wrist exosuit actuated by fabric pneumatic artificial muscles that has lightweight…
Soft robots offer an alternative approach to manipulate inside the constrained space while maintaining the safe interaction with the external environment. Due to its adaptable compliance characteristic, external contact force can easily…
Real-life control tasks involve matters of various substances---rigid or soft bodies, liquid, gas---each with distinct physical behaviors. This poses challenges to traditional rigid-body physics engines. Particle-based simulators have been…
Soft robots can exhibit better performance in specific tasks compared to conventional robots, particularly in healthcare-related tasks. However, the field of soft robotics is still young, and designing them often involves mimicking natural…
Soft robotic instruments could navigate delicate, tortuous anatomy more safely than rigid tools, but clinical adoption is limited by insufficient tip functionalization and real-time feedback at the tissue interface. Few sensing and…
This paper presents a passive control method for multiple degrees of freedom in a soft pneumatic robot through the combination of flow resistor tubes with series inflatable actuators. We designed and developed these 3D printed resistors…
Physics simulators are widely used in robotics fields, from mechanical design to dynamic simulation, and controller design. This paper presents an open-source MATLAB/Simulink simulator for rigid-body articulated systems, including…
The stomach plays a central role in digestion through coordinated muscle contractions, known as gastric peristalsis, driven by slow-wave electrophysiology. Understanding this process is critical for treating motility disorders such as…
Limbless creatures can crawl on flat surfaces by deforming their bodies and interacting with asperities on the ground, offering a biological blueprint for designing efficient limbless robots. Inspired by this natural locomotion, we present…
Biological agents possess bodies that are mostly of soft tissues. Researchers have resorted to soft bodies to investigate Artificial Life (ALife)-related questions; similarly, a new era of soft-bodied robots has just begun. Nevertheless,…
In this project, we focus on human-robot interaction in caregiving scenarios like bathing, where physical contact is inevitable and necessary for proper task execution because force must be applied to the skin. Using finite element…
The concept of creating all-mechanical soft microrobotic systems has great potential to address outstanding challenges in biomedical applications, and introduce more sustainable and multifunctional products. To this end, magnetic fields and…
In the 80's, biomechanicians were asked to work on Computer Aided Surgery applications since orthopaedic surgeons were looking for numerical tools able to predict risks of fractures. More recently, biomechanicians started to address soft…
Incorporating effective tactile sensing and mechanical compliance is key towards enabling robust and safe operation of robots in unknown, uncertain and cluttered environments. Towards realizing this goal, we present a lightweight,…
This paper describes a 2D and 3D simulation engine that quantitatively models the statics, dynamics, and non-linear deformation of heterogeneous soft bodies in a computationally efficient manner. There is a large body of work simulating…
We present a fully edible pneumatic actuator based on gelatin-glycerol composite. The actuator is monolithic, fabricated via a molding process, and measures 90 mm in length, 20 mm in width, and 17 mm in thickness. Thanks to the composite…
The shoulder is responsible for the movement of the entire upper limb. It is capable of articulating in three degrees-of-freedom (DOF), enabling the arm to perform manipulation actions with incomparable dexterity. Exoskeletons targeting the…
Biomimetic entirely soft robots with animal-like behavior and integrated artificial nervous systems will open up totally new perspectives and applications. However, until now all presented studies on soft robots were limited to partly soft…