Related papers: Soft Adaptive Feet for Legged Robots: An Open-Sour…
With the increasing use of assistive robots in rehabilitation and assisted mobility of human patients, there has been a need for a deeper understanding of human-robot interactions particularly through simulations, allowing an understanding…
Robot feet are crucial for maintaining dynamic stability and propelling the body during walking, especially on uneven terrains. Traditionally, robot feet were mostly designed as flat and stiff pieces of metal, which meets its limitations…
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
This paper presents a system for enabling real-time synthesis of whole-body locomotion and manipulation policies for real-world legged robots. Motivated by recent advancements in robot simulation, we leverage the efficient parallelization…
Legged robots are well-suited for broad exploration tasks in complex environments with yielding terrain. Understanding robotic foot-terrain interactions is critical for safe locomotion and walking efficiency for legged robots. This paper…
Mimicking the graceful motion of swimming animals remains a core challenge in soft robotics due to the complexity of fluid-structure interaction and the difficulty of controlling soft, biomimetic bodies. Existing modeling approaches are…
Legged locomotion is a highly promising but under-researched subfield within the field of soft robotics. The compliant limbs of soft-limbed robots offer numerous benefits, including the ability to regulate impacts, tolerate falls, and…
Navigating rugged landscapes poses significant challenges for legged locomotion. Multi-legged robots (those with 6 and greater) offer a promising solution for such terrains, largely due to their inherent high static stability, resulting…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
We present a new open-source torque-controlled legged robot system, with a low-cost and low-complexity actuator module at its core. It consists of a high-torque brushless DC motor and a low-gear-ratio transmission suitable for impedance and…
Ensuring safe and comfortable bite transfer during robot-assisted feeding is challenging due to the close physical human-robot interaction required. This paper presents a novel approach to modeling physical human-robot interaction in a…
Dynamic modeling and control are critical for unleashing soft robots' potential, yet remain challenging due to their complex constitutive behaviors and real-world operating conditions. Bio-inspired musculoskeletal robots, which integrate…
Adaptive morphogenetic robots adapt their morphology and control policies to meet changing tasks and environmental conditions. Many such systems leverage soft components, which enable shape morphing but also introduce simulation and control…
Virtual models of human gait, or digital twins, offer a promising solution for studying mobility without the need for labor-intensive data collection. However, challenges such as the sim-to-real gap and limited adaptability to diverse…
Most locomotion methods for humanoid robots focus on leg-based gaits, yet natural bipeds frequently rely on hands, knees, and elbows to establish additional contacts for stability and support in complex environments. This paper introduces…
Legged robots face significant challenges in moving and navigating on deformable and highly yielding terrain such as mud. We present a resistive force model for legged foot-mud interactions. The model captures rheological behaviors such as…
Legged locomotion benefits from embodied sensing, where perception emerges from the physical interaction between body and environment. We present a soft-surfaced, vision-based tactile foot sensor that endows a bipedal robot with a skin-like…
Biped robots usually adopt feet with a rigid structure that simplifies walking on flat grounds and yet hinders ground adaptation in unstructured environments, thus jeopardizing stability. We recently explored in the SoftFoot the idea of…
Most legged robots are built with leg structures from serially mounted links and actuators and are controlled through complex controllers and sensor feedback. In comparison, animals developed multi-segment legs, mechanical coupling between…
Inspired by the digital twinning systems, a novel real-time digital double framework is developed to enhance robot perception of the terrain conditions. Based on the very same physical model and motion control, this work exploits the use of…