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Soft Robotics presents a rich canvas for free-form and continuum devices capable of exerting forces in any direction and transforming between arbitrary configurations. However, there is no current way to tractably and directly exploit the…
Worm-inspired robots provide an effective locomotion strategy for constrained environments by combining cyclic body deformation with alternating anchoring. For compliant robots, however, the interaction between deformable anchoring…
Compliance in actuation has been exploited to generate highly dynamic maneuvers such as throwing that take advantage of the potential energy stored in joint springs. However, the energy storage and release could not be well-timed yet. On…
Stroke-induced motor impairment often results in substantial loss of upper-limb function, creating a strong demand for rehabilitation robots that enable safe and transparent physical human-robot interaction (pHRI). Variable stiffness…
Fish-inspired aquatic robots are gaining increasing attention in marine robot communities due to their high swimming speeds and efficient propulsion enabled by flexible bodies that generate undulatory motions. To support the design…
This paper evaluates the capabilities of a soft robotic pneumatic actuator derived from the terrain display haptic device, "The Smart Shoe." The bladder design of the Smart Shoe is upgraded to include a pressure supply and greater output…
Direct design of a robot's rendered dynamics, such as in impedance control, is now a well-established control mode in uncertain environments. When the physical interaction port variables are not measured directly, dynamic and kinematic…
Many studies have been conducted on Series Elastic Actuators (SEA) for robot joints because they are effective in terms of flexibility, safety, and energy efficiency. The ability of SEA to robustly handle unexpected disturbances has raised…
Athletic robots demand a whole-body actuation system design that utilizes motors up to the boundaries of their performance. However, creating such robots poses challenges of integrating design principles and reasoning of practical design…
High-performance closed-loop control of truly soft continuum manipulators has remained elusive. Experimental demonstrations have largely relied on sufficiently stiff, piecewise architectures in which each actuated segment behaves as a…
In human-robot systems, ensuring safety during force control in the presence of both internal and external disturbances is crucial. As a typical loosely coupled floating-base robot system, the supernumerary robotic leg (SRL) system is…
The simulation-to-reality (sim-to-real) transfer of large-scale hydraulic robots presents a significant challenge in robotics because of the inherent slow control response and complex fluid dynamics. The complex dynamics result from the…
The heavy-load legged robot has strong load carrying capacity and can adapt to various unstructured terrains. But the large weight results in higher requirements for motion stability and environmental perception ability. In order to utilize…
In this paper, we introduce the concept of using passive arm structures with intrinsic impedance for robot-robot and human-robot collaborative carrying with quadruped robots. The concept is meant for a leader-follower task and takes a…
How to endow aerial robots with the ability to operate in close proximity remains an open problem. The core challenges lie in the propulsion system's dual-task requirement: generating manipulation forces while simultaneously counteracting…
Soft robots are known for their ability to perform tasks with great adaptability, enabled by their distributed, non-uniform stiffness and actuation. Bending is the most fundamental motion for soft robot design, but creating robust, and…
This paper presents a novel approach through the design and implementation of Cycloidal Quasi-Direct Drive actuators for legged robotics. The cycloidal gear mechanism, with its inherent high torque density and mechanical robustness, offers…
Robot interaction control is often limited to low dynamics or low flexibility, depending on whether an active or passive approach is chosen. In this work, we introduce a hybrid control scheme that combines the advantages of active 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…
Harnessing the rich nonlinear dynamics of highly-deformable materials has the potential to unlock the next generation of functional smart materials and devices. However, unlocking such potential requires effective strategies to spatially…