Related papers: Embodied multi-modal sensing with a soft modular a…
Soft robotics focuses on designing robots with highly deformable materials, allowing them to adapt and operate safely and reliably in unstructured and variable environments. While soft robots offer increased compliance over rigid body…
Soft robotic manipulators provide numerous advantages over conventional rigid manipulators in fragile environments such as the marine environment. However, developing analytic inverse models necessary for shape, motion, and force control of…
We propose a novel multi-section cable-driven soft robotic arm inspired by octopus tentacles along with a new modeling approach. Each section of the modular manipulator is made of a soft tubing backbone, a soft silicon arm body, and two…
Artificial skin with the sense of touch can support robots to interact with the surrounding environment efficiently and accomplish complex tasks. Traditional multi-layered artificial skins require complex manufacturing processes which can…
We explore the locomotion of soft robots in granular medium (GM) resulting from the elastic deformation of slender rods. A low-cost, rapidly fabricable robot inspired by the physiological structure of bacteria is presented. It consists of a…
This paper introduces a novel compliant mechanism combining lightweight and energy dissipation for aerial physical interaction. Weighting 400~g at take-off, the mechanism is actuated in the forward body direction, enabling precise position…
Using floor vibrations to accurately predict occupants' footstep locations is essential for smart building operation and privacy-preserving indoor sensing. However, existing approaches are dominated by either physics-based models that rely…
Magnetic soft continuum robots are capable of bending with remote control in confined space environments, and they have been applied in various bioengineering contexts. As one type of ferromagnetic soft continuums, the Magnetically Induced…
Recently, fiber optic sensors such as fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) have been widely investigated for shape reconstruction and force estimation of flexible surgical robots. However, most existing approaches need precise model parameters of…
SLOT (Soft Legged Omnidirectional Tetrapod), a tendon-driven soft quadruped robot with 3D-printed TPU legs, is presented to study physics-informed modeling and control of compliant legged locomotion using only four actuators. Each leg is…
Robots are increasingly being deployed not only in workplaces but also in households. Effectively execute of manipulation tasks by robots relies on variable impedance control with contact forces. Furthermore, robots should possess adaptive…
Robot-assisted dressing has the potential to significantly improve the lives of individuals with mobility impairments. To ensure an effective and comfortable dressing experience, the robot must be able to handle challenging deformable…
This paper introduces a novel approach for modeling the dynamics of soft robots, utilizing a differentiable filter architecture. The proposed approach enables end-to-end training to learn system dynamics, noise characteristics, and temporal…
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…
In this paper, we present a modular pressure control system called PneuDrive that can be used for large-scale, pneumatically-actuated soft robots. The design is particularly suited for situations which require distributed pressure control…
Soft robotic grippers are shown to be high effective for grasping unstructured objects with simple sensing and control strategies. However, they are still limited by their speed, sensing capabilities and actuation mechanism. Hence, their…
Safety and automatic control are extremely important when operating manipulators. For large engineering manipulators, the main challenge is to accurately recognize the posture of all arm segments. In classical sensing methods, the accuracy…
We propose a learning-based system for enabling quadrupedal robots to manipulate large, heavy objects using their whole body. Our system is based on a hierarchical control strategy that uses the deep latent variable embedding which captures…
Surgical robot simulation platform plays a crucial role in enhancing training efficiency and advancing research on robot learning. Much effort have been made by scholars on developing open-sourced surgical robot simulators to facilitate…
Biological agents possess bodies that are mostly of soft tissues. Researchers have resorted to soft bodies to investigate Artificial Life (ALife)-related questions; similarly, a new era of soft-bodied robots has just begun. Nevertheless,…