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Soft actuators have attracted a great deal of interest in the context of rehabilitative and assistive robots for increasing safety and lowering costs as compared to rigid-body robotic systems. During actuation, soft actuators experience…
Handed Shearing Auxetics (HSA) are a promising structure for making electrically driven robots with distributed compliance that convert a motors rotation and torque into extension and force. We overcame past limitations on the range of…
Shape memory alloys (SMAs) have been intensively investigated as actuators for the past several decades. Due to their high actuation energy density compared to other active materials, their current and potential applications in engineering…
Conventional soft pneumatic actuators, typically based on hollow elastomeric chambers, often suffer from small structural support and require costly geometry-specific redesigns for multimodal functionality. Porous materials such as foam,…
We introduce a multi-agent meta-modeling game to generate data, knowledge, and models that make predictions on constitutive responses of elasto-plastic materials. We introduce a new concept from graph theory where a modeler agent is tasked…
Active materials are capable of converting free energy into mechanical work to produce autonomous motion, and exhibit striking collective dynamics that biology relies on for essential functions. Controlling those dynamics and transport in…
Soft robotics is a thriving branch of robotics which takes inspiration from nature and uses affordable flexible materials to design adaptable non-rigid robots. However, their flexible behavior makes these robots hard to model, which is…
This paper presents the design and development of a highly articulated, continuum, wearable, fabric-based Soft Poly-Limb (fSPL). This fabric soft arm acts as an additional limb that provides the wearer with mobile manipulation assistance…
Precise modeling soft robots remains a challenge due to their infinite-dimensional nature governed by partial differential equations. This paper introduces an innovative approach for modeling soft pneumatic actuators, employing a nonlinear…
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,…
This work introduces the Monolithic Unit (MU), an actuator-lattice-sensor building block for soft robotics. The MU integrates pneumatic actuation, a compliant lattice envelope, and candidate sites for optical waveguide sensing into a single…
Compared to traditional rigid robotics, soft robotics has attracted increasing attention due to its advantages as compliance, safety, and low cost. As an essential part of soft robotics, the soft robotic gripper also shows its superior…
Constitutive modeling lies at the core of mechanics, allowing us to map strains onto stresses for a material in a given mechanical setting. Historically, researchers relied on phenomenological modeling where simple mathematical…
The ability of a soft robot to perform specific tasks is determined by its contact configuration, and transitioning between configurations is often necessary to reach a desired position or manipulate an object. Based on this observation, we…
Designing soft robots is a complex and iterative process that demands cross-disciplinary expertise in materials science, mechanics, and control, often relying on intuition and extensive experimentation. While foundation models, especially…
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…
Soft robots are distinguished by their flexibility and adaptability, allowing them to perform nearly impossible tasks for rigid robots. However, controlling their behavior is challenging due to their nonlinear material response and infinite…
Soft robots, particularly magnetic soft robots, require specialized simulation tools to accurately model their deformation under external magnetic fields. However, existing platforms often lack dedicated support for magnetic materials,…
Highly compressible solids, such as foams, exhibit complex responses, including pronounced tension-compression asymmetry. Capturing such behaviors within unified hyperelastic frameworks remains challenging. Invariant-based hyperelastic…
We employ a novel computational modeling framework to perform high-fidelity direct numerical simulations of aero-structural interactions in bat-inspired membrane wings. The wing of a bat consists of an elastic membrane supported by a highly…