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Continuum soft robots are mechanical systems entirely made of continuously deformable elements. This design solution aims to bring robots closer to invertebrate animals and soft appendices of vertebrate animals (e.g., an elephant's trunk, a…
In this paper, we discuss a framework for teaching bimanual manipulation tasks by imitation. To this end, we present a system and algorithms for learning compliant and contact-rich robot behavior from human demonstrations. The presented…
Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…
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,…
This paper presents a hetero-associative sequential memory system for mobile manipulators that learns compact, neuromorphic bindings between robot joint states and tactile observations to produce step-wise action decisions with low compute…
Soft robotic systems offer benefits over traditional rigid systems through reduced contact trauma with soft tissues and by enabling access through tortuous paths in minimally invasive surgery. However, the inherent deformability of soft…
The programming of robotic assembly tasks is a key component in manufacturing and automation. Force-sensitive assembly, however, often requires reactive strategies to handle slight changes in positioning and unforeseen part jamming.…
Mechanical non-reciprocity-manifested as asymmetric responses to opposing mechanical stimuli-has traditionally been achieved through intricate structural nonlinearities in metamaterials. However, continuum solids with inherent…
Passive elastic elements can contribute to stability, energetic efficiency, and impact absorption in both biological and robotic systems. They also add dynamical complexity which makes them more challenging to model and control. The impact…
The emergence of resistive non-volatile memories opens the way to highly energy-efficient computation near- or in-memory. However, this type of computation is not compatible with conventional ECC, and has to deal with device unreliability.…
Self-propulsion and navigation due to the sensing of environmental conditions - such as durotaxis and chemotaxis - are remarkable properties of biological cells that cannot be reproduced by single-component self-propelled particles. We…
This paper describes a 2D and 3D simulation engine that quantitatively models the statics, dynamics, and non-linear deformation of heterogeneous soft bodies in a computationally efficient manner. There is a large body of work simulating…
Passive deformation due to compliance is a commonly used benefit of soft robots, providing opportunities to achieve robust actuation with few active degrees of freedom. Soft growing robots in particular have shown promise in navigation of…
The field of bio-inspired robotics seeks to create mechanical systems that mimic the designs and concepts used by biological systems. One of the more challenging biological concepts to imitate in mechanical systems is the ability to create…
In the mammalian brain newly acquired memories depend on the hippocampus for maintenance and recall, but over time these functions are taken over by the neocortex through a process called systems consolidation. However, reactivation of a…
Flexibility at hardware level is the main driving force behind adaptive systems whose aim is to realise microarhitecture deconfiguration 'online'. This feature allows the software/hardware stack to tolerate drastic changes of the workload…
Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…
In the mammalian nervous system, various synaptic plasticity rules act, either individually or synergistically, and over wide-ranging timescales to dictate the processes that enable learning and memory formation. To mimic biological…
We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…
Multistability-induced hysteresis has been widely studied in mechanical systems, but such behavior has proven more difficult to reproduce experimentally in flow networks. Natural flow networks like animal and plant vasculature can exhibit…