Related papers: Structured Pneumatic Fingerpads for Actively Tunab…
Stiffness variation and real-time position feedback are critical for any robotic system but most importantly for active and wearable devices to interact with the user and environment. Currently, for compact sizes, there is a lack of…
Human fingers achieve exceptional dexterity and adaptability by combining structures with varying stiffness levels, from soft tissues (low) to tendons and cartilage (medium) to bones (high). This paper explores developing a robotic finger…
Soft and biological matter come in a variety of shapes and geometries. When soft surfaces that do not fit into each other due to a mismatch in Gaussian curvatures form an interface, beautiful geometry-induced patterns emerge. In this paper,…
Friction is the basic, ubiquitous mechanical interaction between two surfaces that results in resistance to motion and energy dissipation. In spite of its technological and economic significance, our ability to control friction remains…
Friction modulation technology enables the creation of textural effects on flat haptic displays. However, an intuitive and manageably small design space for construction of such haptic textures remains an unfulfilled goal for user interface…
Regrasping on fixtures is a promising approach to reduce pose uncertainty in robotic assembly, but conventional rigid fixtures lack adaptability and require dedicated designs for each part. To overcome this limitation, we propose a soft jig…
Although research studies in pneumatic soft robots develop rapidly, most pneumatic actuators are still controlled by rigid valves and conventional electronics. The existence of these rigid, electronic components sacrifices the compliance…
Viscous fingering (VF) is an interfacial instability that occurs in a narrow confinement or porous medium when a less-viscous fluid pushes a more viscous one, producing finger-like patterns. Controlling the VF instability is essential to…
Self-touch gestures (e.g., nuanced facial touches and subtle finger scratches) provide rich insights into human behaviors, from hygiene practices to health monitoring. However, existing approaches fall short in detecting such micro gestures…
Rigid grippers used in existing aerial manipulators require precise positioning to achieve successful grasps and transmit large contact forces that may destabilize the drone. This limits the speed during grasping and prevents "dynamic…
Friction is a ubiquitous phenomenon that greatly affects our everyday lives and is responsible for large amounts of energy loss in industrialised societies. Layered materials such as graphene have interesting frictional properties and are…
Piezoelectric quartz tuning forks have been employed as the force sensor in a dynamic mode scanning force microscope operating at temperatures down to 1.7 K at He-gas pressures of typically 5 mbar. An electrochemically etched tungsten tip…
Successfully manipulating many everyday objects, such as potato chips, requires precise force regulation. Failure to modulate force can lead to task failure or irreversible damage to the objects. Humans can precisely achieve this by…
This work presents a new fiberless soft pneumatic actuator that can work multifunctional and bidirectional, and its embedded sensors give it a self-proprioception ability. This actuator works based on the idea of employing helical pressure…
The growing adoption of extended reality (XR) has increased demand for wearable technologies that provide naturalistic tactile sensations while allowing users to interact freely with their environments using bare fingers. However, most…
Robots built from soft materials can alter their shape and size in a particular profile. This shape-changing ability could be extremely helpful for rescue robots and those operating in unknown terrains and environments. In changing shape,…
Planar sliding of objects is modeled and analyzed. The model can be used for non-prehensile manipulation of objects lying on a surface. We study possible motions generated by frictional contacts, such as those arising between a soft finger…
Numerous soft actuators based on PneuNet design have already been proposed and extensively employed across various soft robotics applications in recent years. Despite their widespread use, a common limitation of most existing designs is…
We build a low-level reflex control layer driven by fast tactile feedback for multifinger grasp stabilization. Our hybrid approach combines learned tactile slip detection with model-based internal-force control to halt in-hand slip while…
This paper presents a shear-based control scheme for grasping and manipulating delicate objects with a Pisa/IIT anthropomorphic SoftHand equipped with soft biomimetic tactile sensors on all five fingertips. These `microTac' tactile sensors…