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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…
Curvature and mechanics are intimately connected for thin materials, and this coupling between geometry and physical properties is readily seen in folded structures from intestinal villi and pollen grains, to wrinkled membranes and…
Snapping of a slender structure is utilized in a wide range of natural and man-made systems, mostly to achieve rapid movement without relying on muscle-like elements. Although several mechanisms for elastic energy storage and rapid release…
Precise kinematic modeling is critical in calibration and controller design for soft robots, yet remains a challenging issue due to their highly nonlinear and complex behaviors. To tackle the issue, numerous data-driven machine learning…
Inchworm crawling allows for both quasistatic and dynamic gaits at a wide range of actuation frequencies. This locomotion mechanism is common in nonskeletal animals and exploited extensively in the bio-inspired field of soft robotics. In…
Fitting two different materials is a versatile methodology in manufacturing complex structures. One of the canonical models for fitting is the snap-fit model, in which flexible materials and rigid structures are assembled by pushing their…
Natural selection has tuned many flying and swimming animals across different species to share the same narrow design space for optimal high-efficient and energy-saving locomotion, e.g., their dimensionless Strouhal numbers St that relate…
Soft pneumatic legged robots show promise in their ability to traverse a range of different types of terrain, including natural unstructured terrain met in applications like precision agriculture. They can adapt their body morphology to the…
Soft robots have high adaptability and safeness which are derived from their softness, and therefore it is paid attention to use them in human society. However, the controllability of soft robots is not enough to perform dexterous behaviors…
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…
Snakes can move through almost any terrain. Similarly, snake robots hold the promise as a versatile platform to traverse complex environments like earthquake rubble. Unlike snake locomotion on flat surfaces which is inherently stable, when…
Soft and lightweight grippers have greatly enhanced the performance of robotic manipulators in handling complex objects with varying shape, texture, and stiffness. However, the combination of universal grasping with passive sensing…
Snapping mechanisms are investigated for an elastic strip with ends imposed to move and rotate in time. Attacking the problem analytically via Euler's elastica and the second variation of the total potential energy, the number of stable…
Soft robots show compliance and have infinite degrees of freedom. Thanks to these properties, such robots can be leveraged for surgery, rehabilitation, biomimetics, unstructured environment exploring, and industrial grippers. In this case,…
We examine the problem of snake-like locomotion by studying a system consisting of a planar inextensible elastic rod that is able to control its spontaneous curvature. Using a Cosserat model we derive, through variational principles, the…
Navigation and motion control of a robot to a destination are tasks that have historically been performed with the assumption that contact with the environment is harmful. This makes sense for rigid-bodied robots where obstacle collisions…
We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…
Inspired by spiking neural feedback, we propose a spiking controller for efficient locomotion in a soft robotic crawler. Its bistability, akin to neural fast positive feedback, combined with a sensorimotor slow negative feedback loop,…
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…
Soft robots are intrinsically capable of adapting to different environments by changing their shape in response to interaction forces with the environment. However, sensing and feedback are still required for higher level decisions and…