Related papers: Steerable rolling of a 1-DoF robot using an intern…
We define "robotic contact juggling" to be the purposeful control of the motion of a three-dimensional smooth object as it rolls freely on a motion-controlled robot manipulator, or "hand." While specific examples of robotic contact juggling…
Voxel-based structures provide a modular, mechanically flexible periodic lattice which can be used as a soft robot through internal deformations. To engage these structures for robotic tasks, we use a finite element method to characterize…
The Modboat is a low-cost, underactuated, modular robot capable of surface swimming, docking to other modules, and undocking from them using only a single motor and two passive flippers. Undocking is achieved by causing intentional…
For the majority of tasks performed by traditional serial robot arms, such as bin picking or pick and place, only two or three degrees of freedom (DOF) are required for motion; however, by augmenting the number of degrees of freedom,…
Soft robot are celebrated for their propensity to enable compliant and complex robot-environment interactions. Soft robotic manipulators, or slender continuum structure robots have the potential to exploit these interactions to enable new…
In this work we propose an approach to learn a robust policy for solving the pivoting task. Recently, several model-free continuous control algorithms were shown to learn successful policies without prior knowledge of the dynamics of the…
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,…
Imagine a robot that can assemble a functional product from the individual parts presented in any configuration to the robot. Designing such a robotic system is a complex problem which presents several open challenges. To bypass these…
Particle robots are novel biologically-inspired robotic systems where locomotion can be achieved collectively and robustly, but not independently. While its control is currently limited to a hand-crafted policy for basic locomotion tasks,…
Two-dimensional multilinked structures can benefit aerial robots in both maneuvering and manipulation because of their deformation ability. However, certain types of singular forms must be avoided during deformation. Hence, an additional 1…
Certain wheeled mobile robots e.g., electric wheelchairs, can operate through indirect joystick controls from users. Correct steering angle becomes essential when the user should determine the vehicle direction and velocity, in particular…
The single, double, and triple pendulum has served as an illustrative experimental benchmark system for scientists to study dynamical behavior for more than four centuries. The pendulum system exhibits a wide range of interesting behaviors,…
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…
Rock skipping is a highly dynamic and relatively complex task that can easily be performed by humans. This project aims to bring rock skipping into a robotic setting, utilizing the lessons we learned in Robotic Manipulation. Specifically,…
This paper presents a nonlinear control design for highly underactuated balance robots, which possess more numbers of unactuated degree-of-freedom (DOF) than actuated ones. To address the challenge of simultaneously trajectory tracking of…
This paper proposes a simple strategy for sim-to-real in Deep-Reinforcement Learning (DRL) -- called Roll-Drop -- that uses dropout during simulation to account for observation noise during deployment without explicitly modelling its…
We present a scheme for producing tunable active dynamics in a self-propelled robotic device. The robot moves using the differential drive mechanism where two wheels can vary their instantaneous velocities independently. These velocities…
The waist plays a crucial role in the agile movement of many animals in nature. It provides the torso with additional degrees of freedom and flexibility, inspiring researchers to incorporate this biological feature into robotic structures…
Robotic fish have attracted growing attention in recent years owing to their biomimetic design and potential applications in environmental monitoring and biological surveys. Among robotic fish employing the Body-Caudal Fin (BCF) locomotion…
Origami inspired architectures offer a powerful route toward lightweight, reconfigurable, and programmable robotic systems. Yet, a unified mechanics framework capable of seamlessly bridging rigid folding, elastic deformation, and stability…