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This paper presents a combined task and motion planner for a robot arm to carry out 3D metal wire curving tasks by collaborating with a bending machine. We assume a collaborative robot that is safe to work in a human environment but has a…
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…
The complex behavior of highly deformable mechanical metamaterials can substantially enhance the performance of soft robots.
Soft robots are notoriously hard to control. This is partly due to the scarcity of models able to capture their complex continuum mechanics, resulting in a lack of control methodologies that take full advantage of body compliance. Currently…
Energy efficiency is critical to the success of legged robotics. Efficiency is lost through wasted energy during locomotion and standing. Including elastic elements has been shown to reduce movement costs, while including breaks can reduce…
Modulating the stiffness of soft actuators is crucial for improving the efficiency of interaction with the environment. However, current stiffness modulation mechanisms are hard to achieve high lateral stiffness and a wide range of bending…
Over the past decades, we have witnessed a rapid emergence of soft and reconfigurable robots thanks to their capability to interact safely with humans and adapt to complex environments. However, their softness makes accurate control very…
Due to their inherent compliance, soft robots are more versatile than rigid linked robots when they interact with their environment, such as object manipulation or biomimetic motion, and considered the key element in introducing robots to…
Common disabilities like stroke and spinal cord injuries may cause loss of motor function in hands. They can be treated with robot assisted rehabilitation techniques, like continuously opening and closing the hand with help of a robot, in a…
This paper presents a novel, modular, cable-driven soft robotic arm featuring multi-segment reconfigurability. The proposed architecture enables a stackable system with independent segment control, allowing scalable adaptation to diverse…
Highly articulated organisms serve as blueprints for incredibly dexterous mechanisms, but building similarly capable robotic counterparts has been hindered by the difficulties of developing electromechanical actuators with both the high…
Tree fruit growers around the world are facing labor shortages for critical operations, including harvest and pruning. There is a great interest in developing robotic solutions for these labor-intensive tasks, but current efforts have been…
Soft robot arms have made significant progress towards completing human-scale tasks, but designing arms for tasks with specific load and workspace requirements remains difficult. A key challenge is the lack of model-based design tools,…
The design of robots that are light, soft, powerful is a grand challenge. Since they can easily adapt to dynamic environments, soft robotic systems have the potential of changing the status-quo of bulky robotics. A crucial component of soft…
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…
Soft multi-axis force/torque sensors provide safe and precise force interaction. Capturing the complete degree-of-freedom of force is imperative for accurate force measurement with six-axis force/torque sensors. However, cross-axis coupling…
Soft robots offer more flexibility, compliance, and adaptability than traditional rigid robots. They are also typically lighter and cheaper to manufacture. However, their use in real-world applications is limited due to modeling challenges…
Dynamic motions are a key feature of robotic arms, enabling them to perform tasks quickly and efficiently. Soft continuum manipulators do not currently consider dynamic parameters when operating in task space. This shortcoming makes…
High-speed and high-acceleration movements are inherently hard to control. Applying learning to the control of such motions on anthropomorphic robot arms can improve the accuracy of the control but might damage the system. The inherent…
Ants are six-legged insects that can carry loads ten times heavier than their body weight. Since having six-legs, they are intrinsically stable. They are powerful and can carry heavy loads. For these reasons, in this paper a new parallel…