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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…

Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…

Bilayer bending based soft actuators are widely utilized in soft robotics for locomotion and object gripping. However, studies on soft actuators based on bilayer doming remain largely unexplored despite the often-observed dome-like shapes…

Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…

Soft robots are interesting examples of hyper-redundancy in robotics, however, the nonlinear continuous dynamics of these robots and the use of hyper-elastic and visco-elastic materials makes modeling of these robots more complicated. This…

Pneumatic soft everting robotic structures have the potential to facilitate human transfer tasks due to their ability to grow underneath humans without sliding friction and their utility as a flexible sling when deflated. Tubular structures…

Stability and reliable operation under a spectrum of environmental conditions is still an open challenge for soft and continuum style manipulators. The inability to carry sufficient load and effectively reject external disturbances are two…

Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…

Traditional robots have rigid links and structures that limit their ability to interact with the dynamics of their immediate environment. For example, conventional robot manipulators with rigid links can only manipulate objects using…

Soft robots have drawn great interest due to their ability to take on a rich range of shapes and motions, compared to traditional rigid robots. However, the motions, and underlying statics and dynamics, pose significant challenges to…

Soft robotic actuators are safe and adaptable devices with inherent compliance, which makes them attractive for manipulating delicate and complex objects. Researchers have integrated stiff materials into soft actuators to increase their…

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…

To achieve real-world functionality, robots must have the ability to carry out decision-making computations. However, soft robots stretch and therefore need a solution other than rigid computers. Examples of embedding computing capacity…

While rigid robots are extensively used in various applications, they are limited in the tasks they can perform and can be unsafe in close human-robot interactions. Soft robots on the other hand surpass the capabilities of rigid robots in…

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…

Flexible robots have advantages over rigid robots in their ability to conform physically to their environment and to form a wide variety of shapes. Sensing the force applied by or to flexible robots is useful for both navigation and…

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…

Reconfigurable robots are at the forefront of robotics innovation due to their unmatched versatility and adaptability in addressing various tasks through collaborative operations. This paper explores the design and implementation of a novel…

Miniature robots are untethered actuators, which have significant potential to make existing minimally invasive surgery considerably safer and painless, and enable unprecedented treatments because they are much smaller and dexterous than…

Soft robots offer adaptability and safe interaction with complex environments. Rapid prototyping kits that allow soft robots to be assembled easily will allow different geometries to be explored quickly to suit different environments or to…