Related papers: Soft yet Effective Robots via Holistic Co-Design

The foundation of successful human collaboration is deeply rooted in the principles of fairness. As robots are increasingly prevalent in various parts of society where they are working alongside groups and teams of humans, their ability to…

Our goal is to make robotics more accessible to casual users by reducing the domain knowledge required in designing and building robots. Towards this goal, we present an interactive computational design system that enables users to design…

Effective communication between humans and collaborative robots is essential for seamless Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC). In noisy industrial settings, nonverbal communication, such as gestures, plays a key role in conveying commands and…

Complex tasks require human collaboration since robots do not have enough dexterity. However, robots are still used as instruments and not as collaborative systems. We are introducing a framework to ensure safety in a human-robot…

Traditional approaches to human-robot interaction design typically examine robot behaviors in controlled environments and narrow tasks. These methods are impractical for designing robots that interact with diverse user groups in complex…

In this context, a major focus of this thesis is on unintentional collisions, where a straight goal is to eliminate injury from users and passerby's via realtime sensing and control systems. A less obvious focus is to combine collision…

The design of future mobility solutions and the design of the mobility systems they enable are closely coupled. Indeed, knowledge about the intended service of novel mobility solutions would impact their design and deployment process,…

In recent years, soft robotics simulators have evolved to offer various functionalities, including the simulation of different material types (e.g., elastic, hyper-elastic) and actuation methods (e.g., pneumatic, cable-driven, servomotor).…

Design-oriented HRI is increasingly interested in robots as long-term companions, yet many designs still assume a fixed form and a stable set of functions. We present an ongoing design research program that treats modularity as a designerly…

Sidewalk robots are increasingly common across the globe. Yet, their operation on public paths poses challenges for people with mobility disabilities (PwMD) who face barriers to accessibility, such as insufficient curb cuts. We interviewed…

This chapter is about the fundamentals of fabrication, control, and human-robot interaction of a new type of collaborative robotic manipulators, called malleable robots, which are based on adjustable architectures of varying stiffness for…

Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…

An important factor in developing control models for human-robot collaboration is how acceptable they are to their human partners. One such method for creating acceptable control models is to attempt to mimic human-like behaviour in robots…

Different subsystems of organisms adapt over many time scales, such as rapid changes in the nervous system (learning), slower morphological and neurological change over the lifetime of the organism (postnatal development), and change over…

Despite advances in dexterous hand manipulation, robotic hand design is still largely decoupled from task-driven evaluation and control, limiting systematic optimization. Existing robotic hand co-design approaches are often limited in…

Integrating Brain-Machine Interfaces into non-clinical applications like robot motion control remains difficult - despite remarkable advancements in clinical settings. Specifically, EEG-based motor imagery systems are still error-prone,…

Rigid bodies, plastic impact, persistent contact, Coulomb friction, and massless limbs are ubiquitous simplifications introduced to reduce the complexity of mechanics models despite the obvious physical inaccuracies that each incurs…

Animal welfare education could greatly benefit from customized robots to help children learn about animals and their behavior, and thereby promote positive, safe child-animal interactions. To this end, we ran Participatory Design workshops…

While soft robot manipulators offer compelling advantages over rigid counterparts, including inherent compliance, safe human-robot interaction, and the ability to conform to complex geometries, accurate forward modeling from low-dimensional…

Mobile soft robots offer compelling applications in fields ranging from urban search and rescue to planetary exploration. A critical challenge of soft robotic control is that the nonlinear dynamics imposed by soft materials often result in…