Related papers: Reconfigurable Tendon-Driven Robots: Eliminating I…
Tendon-driven continuum robots offer intrinsically safe and contact-rich interactions owing to their kinematic redundancy and structural compliance. However, their perception often depends on external sensors, which increase hardware…
Robotic systems driven by artificial muscles present unique challenges due to the nonlinear dynamics of actuators and the complex designs of mechanical structures. Traditional model-based controllers often struggle to achieve desired…
Tendon-driven robotic catheters are capable of precise execution of minimally invasive cardiac procedures including ablations and imaging. These procedures require accurate mathematical models of not only the catheter and tendons but also…
Manipulation of objects within a robot's hand is one of the most important challenges in achieving robot dexterity. The "Roller Graspers" refers to a family of non-anthropomorphic hands utilizing motorized, rolling fingertips to achieve…
Husky Carbon, a robot developed by Northeastern University, serves as a research platform to explore unification of posture manipulation and thrust vectoring. Unlike conventional quadrupeds, its joint actuators and thrusters enable enhanced…
Modular reconfigurable robots require reliable mechanisms for automated module exchange, but conventional rigid active couplings often fail due to inevitable positioning and orientational errors. To address this, we propose a…
In co-manipulative continuum robots (CCRs), multiple continuum arms cooperate by grasping a common flexible object, forming a closed-chain deformable mechanical system. The closed-chain coupling induces strong dynamic interactions and…
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…
Hyper-redundant tendon-driven manipulators offer greater flexibility and compliance over traditional manipulators. A common way of controlling such manipulators relies on adjusting tendon lengths, which is an accessible control parameter.…
Generating safe motion plans in real-time is a key requirement for deploying robot manipulators to assist humans in collaborative settings. In particular, robots must satisfy strict safety requirements to avoid self-damage or harming nearby…
Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful approach for learning control policies directly from high-dimensional state and observation. However, it tends to be data-inefficient, which is especially costly in robotic learning…
Isoperimetric robots are large scale, untethered inflatable robots that can undergo large shape changes, but have only been demonstrated in one 3D shape -- an octahedron. These robots consist of independent triangles that can change shape…
In-vivo environments, magnetically actuated soft robots offer advantages such as wireless operation and precise control, showing promising potential for painless detection and therapeutic procedures. We developed a trileg magnetically…
Active control of the shape of soft robots is challenging. Despite having an infinite number of passive degrees of freedom (DOFs), soft robots typically only have a few actively controllable DOFs, limited by the number of degrees of…
Supernumerary Robotic Limbs (SRLs) can enhance human capability within close proximity. However, as a wearable device, the generated moment from its operation acts on the human body as an external torque. When the moments increase, more…
While the animals' Fin-to-Limb evolution has been well-researched in biology, such morphological transformation remains under-adopted in the modern design of advanced robotic limbs. This paper investigates a novel class of overconstrained…
Navigating robots safely and efficiently in crowded and complex environments remains a significant challenge. However, due to the dynamic and intricate nature of these settings, planning efficient and collision-free paths for robots to…
Recently, many humanoid robots have been increasingly deployed in various facilities, including hospitals and assisted living environments, where they are often remotely controlled by human operators. Their kinematic redundancy enhances…
Soft robots have the ability to adapt to their environment, which makes them suitable for use in disaster areas and agricultural fields, where their mobility is constrained by complex terrain. One of the main challenges in developing soft…
This paper presents redundancy resolution and disturbance rejection via torque optimization in Hybrid Cable-Driven Robots (HCDRs). To begin with, we initiate a redundant HCDR for nonlinear whole-body system modeling and model reduction.…