Related papers: Reconfigurable hydrostatics: Toward versatile and …
Legged robots offer several advantages when navigating unstructured environments, but they often fall short of the efficiency achieved by wheeled robots. One promising strategy to improve their energy economy is to leverage their natural…
A hyper-redundant robotic arm is a manipulator with many degrees of freedom, capable of executing tasks in cluttered environments where robotic arms with fewer degrees of freedom are unable to operate. This paper introduces a new method for…
Soft actuators have drawn significant attention from researchers with an inherently compliant design to address the safety issues in physical human-robot interactions. However, they are also vulnerable and pose new challenges in the design,…
Classical rigid-bodied robotic systems are presented with proven success in theoretical development and industrial applications, are recently challenged by the emergence of soft robotics due to a growing need in physical human-robot…
We describe a fluidic actuator design that replaces the sealed chamber of a hydraulic cylinder using a soft actuator to provide compliant linear compression with a large force ($\geq$100 N) at a low operation pressure ($\leq$50 kPa) for a…
While its biological significance is well-documented, its application in soft robotics, particularly for the transport of fragile and irregularly shaped objects, remains underexplored. This study presents a modular soft robotic actuator…
Design of robotic systems that safely and efficiently operate in uncertain operational conditions, such as rehabilitation and physical assistance robots, remains an important challenge in the field. Current methods for the design of energy…
When humans physically interact with robots, we need the robots to be both safe and performant. Series elastic actuators (SEAs) fundamentally advance safety by introducing compliant actuation. On the one hand, adding a spring mitigates the…
Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SRLs) are wearable robots augmenting human capabilities by acting as a co-worker, reaching objects, support human arms, etc. However, existing SRLs lack the mechanical backdrivability and bandwidth required for…
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…
In the fields of agricultural machinery, construction equipment, and special-purpose vehicles, hydrostatic transmission (HST) drive systems have witnessed a significant increase in market penetration. With the rapid development of…
The controlled actuation of hydraulic and pneumatic actuators has unveiled fresh and thrilling opportunities for designing mobile robots with adaptable structures. Previously reported rolling robots, which were powered by fluidic systems,…
Macroscale robotic systems have demonstrated great capabilities of high speed, precise, and agile functions. However, the ability of soft robots to perform complex tasks, especially in centimeter and millimeter scale, remains limited due to…
This paper presents results about fabrication and operation of electrostatic actuators in liquids with various permittivities. In the static mode, we provide experimental and theoretical demonstration that the pull-in effect can be shifted…
A robotic platform for mobile manipulation needs to satisfy two contradicting requirements for many real-world applications: A compact base is required to navigate through cluttered indoor environments, while the support needs to be large…
Compliant robotics have seen successful applications in energy efficient locomotion and cyclic manipulation. However, exploitation of variable physical impedance for energy efficient sequential movements has not been extensively addressed.…
We design, build, and thoroughly test a new type of actuator dubbed viscoelastic liquid cooled actuator (VLCA) for robotic applications. VLCAs excel in the following five critical axes of performance: energy efficiency, torque density,…
Recent interest in mobile manipulation has resulted in a wide range of new robot designs. A large family of these designs focuses on modular platforms that combine existing mobile bases with static manipulator arms. They combine these…
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…
Parallel-elastic joints can improve the efficiency and strength of robots by assisting the actuators with additional torques. For these benefits to be realized, a spring needs to be carefully designed. However, designing robots is an…