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Soft and lightweight grippers have greatly enhanced the performance of robotic manipulators in handling complex objects with varying shape, texture, and stiffness. However, the combination of universal grasping with passive sensing…
Soft robotic hands and grippers are increasingly attracting attention as a robotic end-effector. Compared with rigid counterparts, they are safer for human-robot and environment-robot interactions, easier to control, lower cost and weight,…
Contact-rich manipulation tasks in unstructured environments pose significant robustness challenges for robot learning, where unexpected collisions can cause damage and hinder policy acquisition. Existing soft end-effectors face fundamental…
Adapting upper-limb impedance (i.e., stiffness, damping, inertia) is essential for humans interacting with dynamic environments for executing grasping or manipulation tasks. On the other hand, control methods designed for state-of-the-art…
Soft robotic grippers gently and safely manipulate delicate objects due to their inherent adaptability and softness. Limited by insufficient stiffness and imprecise force control, conventional soft grippers are not suitable for applications…
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 the application of a learning control approach for the realization of a fast and reliable pick-and-place application with a spherical soft robotic arm. The arm is characterized by a lightweight design and exhibits…
A problem that plagues robotic grasping is the misalignment of the object and gripper due to difficulties in precise localization, actuation, etc. Under-actuated robotic hands with compliant mechanisms are used to adapt and compensate for…
The functional replication and actuation of complex structures inspired by nature is a longstanding goal for humanity. Creating such complex structures combining soft and rigid features and actuating them with artificial muscles would…
Robot arms that assist humans should be able to pick up, move, and release everyday objects. Today's assistive robot arms use rigid grippers to pinch items between fingers; while these rigid grippers are well suited for large and heavy…
Compliance is a strong requirement for human-robot interactions. Soft-robots provide an opportunity to cover the lack of compliance in conventional actuation mechanisms, however, the control of them is very challenging given their intrinsic…
We propose a mechanically simple and cheap design for a series elastic actuator with controllable stiffness. Such characteristics are necessary for animals for running, jumping, throwing, and manipulation, yet in robots, variable stiffness…
Grasping, in both biological and engineered mechanisms, can be highly sensitive to the gripper and object morphology, as well as perception, and motion planning. Here we circumvent the need for feedback or precise planning by using an array…
Inspired by the snap-through action of a steel hairclip, we propose a design method for in-plane prestressed mechanisms that exhibit biomimetic morphing and high locomotion performance. Compliant bistable flapping mechanisms are fabricated…
Fine assembly tasks such as electrical connector insertion have tight tolerances and sensitive components, requiring compensation of alignment errors while applying sufficient force in the insertion direction, ideally at high speeds and…
Through the implementation of reconfigurability to achieve flexibility and adaptation to tasks by morphology changes rather than by increasing the number of joints, malleable robots present advantages over traditional serial robot arms in…
Safe yet stable grasping requires a robotic hand to apply sufficient force on the object to immobilize it while keeping it from getting damaged. Soft robotic hands have been proposed for safe grasping due to their passive compliance, but…
This study addresses a flexible holding tool for robotic disassembly. We propose a shell-type soft jig that securely and universally holds objects, mitigating the risk of component damage and adapting to diverse shapes while enabling soft…
Stiffness estimation is crucial for delicate object manipulation in robotic and prosthetic hands but remains challenging due to dependence on force and displacement measurement and real-time sensory integration. This study presents a…
Over the past few decades, efforts have been made towards robust robotic grasping, and therefore dexterous manipulation. The soft gripper has shown their potential in robust grasping due to their inherent properties-low, control complexity,…