Related papers: Design and Characterization of a Micro-Vibration A…
Adhesion control at the interface of two surfaces is crucial in many applications. Examples are the design of micro and nanodevices such as microfuidics devices, biochips, and electronic sensors. Adhesion at the interface of two materials…
We present exact numerical results for the friction force and the contact area for a viscoelastic solid (rubber) in sliding contact with hard, randomly rough substrates. The rough surfaces are self-affine fractal with roughness over several…
Soft robots are notoriously hard to control. This is partly due to the scarcity of models able to capture their complex continuum mechanics, resulting in a lack of control methodologies that take full advantage of body compliance. Currently…
A self-consistent model is developed to investigate attachment / detachment kinetics of two soft, deformable microspheres with irregular surface and coated with flexible binding ligands. The model highlights how the microscale binding…
Pneumatic muscle actuators (PMA) are easy-to-fabricate, lightweight, compliant, and have high power-to-weight ratio, thus making them the ideal actuation choice for many soft and continuum robots. But so far, limited work has been carried…
This paper provides a novel surface design and experimental evaluation of a super-twisting algorithm (STA) based control for hydraulic cylinder actuators. The proposed integral sliding surface allows to track a sufficiently smooth reference…
Vine robots are a class of soft continuum robots that grow via tip eversion, allowing them to move their tip without relying on reaction forces from the environment. Constructed from compliant materials such as fabric and thin, flexible…
Inchworm crawling allows for both quasistatic and dynamic gaits at a wide range of actuation frequencies. This locomotion mechanism is common in nonskeletal animals and exploited extensively in the bio-inspired field of soft robotics. In…
We develop an analytical theory of adhesive interaction of viscoelastic spheres in quasistatic approximation. Deformations and deformation rates are assumed to be small, which allows for the application of the Hertz contact theory, modified…
The field of physical human-robot interaction has dramatically evolved in the last decades. As a result, the robotic system's requirements have become more challenging, including personalized behavior for different tasks and users. Various…
Advanced machine learning algorithms require platforms that are extremely robust and equipped with rich sensory feedback to handle extensive trial-and-error learning without relying on strong inductive biases. Traditional robotic designs,…
Although robots with flexible bodies are superior in terms of the contact and adaptability, it is difficult to control them precisely. On the other hand, human beings make use of the surrounding environments to stabilize their bodies and…
Bristle bots are vibration-driven robots actuated by the motion of an internal oscillating mass. Vibrations are translated into directed locomotion due to the alternating friction resistance between robots' bristles and the substrate during…
Amorphous solids tend to present an abundance of soft elastic modes, which diminish their transport properties, generate heterogeneities in their elastic response, and affect non-linear processes like thermal activation of plasticity. This…
Experimental modal analysis (EMA) is of great importance for the dynamic characterization of structures. Existing methods typically employ out-of-plane forces for excitation and measure the acceleration or strain for modal analysis.…
Two-dimensional (2D) materials assembled into van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures contain unlimited combinations of mechanical, optical, and electrical properties that can be harnessed for potential device applications. Critically, these…
Robotic grippers with visuotactile sensors have access to rich tactile information for grasping tasks but encounter difficulty in partially encompassing large objects with sufficient grip force. While hierarchical gecko-inspired adhesives…
Aerobat is a bat-inspired flapping-wing robot with a wing gait generate by the computational structure, a planar linkage of carbon fiber links driven by a single motor. This design minimizes weight but couples both wings to a shared input…
We study the adhesive contact between elastic solids with randomly rough, self affine fractal surfaces. We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulation results for the interfacial stress distribution and the wall-wall separation. We compare…
This review provides an introduction to the essential physics of soft adhesion, including the thermodynamics of adhesion and wetting, the mechanics of contact with deformable materials, and the material properties that most affect…