Related papers: Soft Electrothermal Meta-Actuator for Robust Multi…
Practical use of robotic manipulators made from soft materials requires generating and executing complex motions. We present the first approach for generating trajectories of a thermally-actuated soft robotic manipulator. Based on…
Soft elastomers that can exhibit extremely large deformations under the action of an electric field are essential for applications such as soft robotics, stretchable and flexible electronics, energy harvesting among others. The critical…
Metamaterials bring sub-wavelength resonating structures together to overcome the limitations of conventional materials. The realization of active metadevices has been an outstanding challenge that requires electrically reconfigurable…
Continuum and soft robots can leverage complex actuator shapes to take on useful shapes while actuating only a few of their many degrees of freedom. Continuum robots that also grow increase the range of potential shapes that can be actuated…
We propose a new robotic cover prototype that achieves thermal display while also being soft. We focus on the thermal cue because previous human studies have identified it as part of the touch pleasantness. The robotic cover surface can be…
Soft Robotics presents a rich canvas for free-form and continuum devices capable of exerting forces in any direction and transforming between arbitrary configurations. However, there is no current way to tractably and directly exploit the…
Nanophotonic engineering of light-matter interaction at subwavelength scale allows thermal radiation that is fundamentally different from that of traditional thermal emitters and provides exciting opportunities for various thermal-photonic…
Soft actuators offer a safe, adaptable approach to tasks like gentle grasping and dexterous manipulation. Creating accurate models to control such systems however is challenging due to the complex physics of deformable materials. Accurate…
Soft parallel robots with their manipulation safety and low commercial cost show a promising future for delicate operations and safe human-robot interactions. However, promoting the use of electroactive polymers (EAPs) is still challenging…
Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…
Rapid and versatile object manipulation in air is an open challenge. An energy-efficient and adaptive soft gripper combined with an agile aerial vehicle could revolutionize aerial robotic manipulation in areas such as warehousing. This…
Numerous soft actuators based on PneuNet design have already been proposed and extensively employed across various soft robotics applications in recent years. Despite their widespread use, a common limitation of most existing designs is…
Conformable robotic systems are attractive for applications in which they can be used to actuate structures with large surface areas, to provide forces through wearable garments, or to realize autonomous robotic systems. We present a new…
Recently, Adaptive Secondary Mirrors showed excellent on-sky results in the Near Infrared wavelengths. They currently provide 30mm inter-actuator spacing and about 1 kHz bandwidth. Pushing these devices to be operated at visible wavelengths…
The human skin exhibits remarkable capability to perceive contact forces and environmental temperatures, providing intricate information essential for nuanced manipulation. Despite recent advancements in soft tactile sensors, a significant…
Dynamic motions are a key feature of robotic arms, enabling them to perform tasks quickly and efficiently. Soft continuum manipulators do not currently consider dynamic parameters when operating in task space. This shortcoming makes…
This paper proposes a soft sensor embedded in a soft ring actuator with five fingers as a soft hand to identify the bifurcation of manipulated objects during the in-hand manipulation process. The manipulation is performed by breaking the…
Thermal diodes that enable directional heat transport are essential for advanced thermal management in microelectronics, energy systems, and thermal logic devices. However, existing designs based on phase-change materials, nanostructures,…
Soft heat engines are poised to play a vital role in future soft robots due to their easy integration into soft structures and low-voltage power requirements. Recent works have demonstrated soft heat engines relying on liquid-to-gas phase…
Multilayer piezoelectric polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) actuators are a promising approach to enhance performance of soft microrobotic systems. In this work, we develop and characterize multilayer PVDF actuators with parallel voltage…