Related papers: Bio-Inspired Pneumatic Modular Actuator for Perist…
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…
Object manipulation in robotics faces challenges due to diverse object shapes, sizes, and fragility. Gripper-based methods offer precision and low degrees of freedom (DOF) but the gripper limits the kind of objects to grasp. On the other…
Soft-growing robots (i.e., vine robots) are a promising class of soft robots that allow for navigation and growth in tightly confined environments. However, these robots remain challenging to model and control due to the complex interplay…
Soft robots have the ability to adapt to their environment, which makes them suitable for use in disaster areas and agricultural fields, where their mobility is constrained by complex terrain. One of the main challenges in developing soft…
Biological systems, such as the octopus, exhibit masterful cross-scale manipulation by adaptively reconfiguring their entire form, a capability that remains elusive in robotics. Conventional soft grippers, while compliant, are mostly…
Cooperative transport, the simultaneous movement of an object by multiple agents, has been widely observed in biological systems such as ant colonies, which improve efficiency and adaptability in dynamic environments. Inspired by these…
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…
Precise modeling soft robots remains a challenge due to their infinite-dimensional nature governed by partial differential equations. This paper introduces an innovative approach for modeling soft pneumatic actuators, employing a nonlinear…
Through the utilization of smart materials and well-designed structures, functional surfaces have been developed to enable small-scale liquid/solid manipulation tasks, thereby facilitating crucial applications in the fields of…
We introduced a new concept for fabricating solvent stimulus polymer actuators with unprecedented sensitivity and accuracy. This was accomplished by integrating porous architectures and electrostatic complexation gradients in a poly(ionic…
Object manipulation is a fundamental challenge in robotics, where systems must balance trade-offs among manipulation capabilities, system complexity, and throughput. Distributed manipulator systems (DMS) use the coordinated motion of…
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…
Soft Robots distinguish themselves from traditional robots by embracing flexible kinematics. Because of their recent emergence, there exist numerous uncharted territories, including novel actuators, manufacturing processes, and advanced…
Many organisms leverage an interplay between shape and activity to generate motion and adapt to their environment. Embedding such feedback into synthetic microrobots could eliminate the need for sensors, software, and actuators, yet current…
This work introduces the Monolithic Unit (MU), an actuator-lattice-sensor building block for soft robotics. The MU integrates pneumatic actuation, a compliant lattice envelope, and candidate sites for optical waveguide sensing into a single…
Soft robots have been leveraged in considerable areas like surgery, rehabilitation, and bionics due to their softness, flexibility, and safety. However, it is challenging to produce two same soft robots even with the same mold and…
This paper introduces a novel design method that enhances the force/torque, bendability, and controllability of soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs). The complex structure of the soft actuator is simplified by approximating it as a cantilever…
Soft actuators offer a safe, adaptable approach to tasks like gentle grasping and dexterous manipulation. Creating accurate models to control such systems however is challenging due to the complex physics of deformable materials. Accurate…
Snapping instabilities in soft structures offer a powerful pathway to achieve rapid and energy-efficient actuation. In this study, an eccentric dome-shaped snapping actuator is developed to generate controllable asymmetric motion through…
Soft machines are poised to deliver significant real-world impact, with soft robotics emerging as a key sub-discipline. This field integrates biological inspiration, materials science, and embodied intelligence to create bio-robotic…