Related papers: Topology-Inspired Morphological Descriptor for Sof…
Soft robots are made of compliant materials that perform their tasks by deriving motion from elastic deformations. They are used in various applications, e.g., for handling fragile objects, navigating sensitive/complex environments, etc.,…
Continuum robots are typically slender and flexible with infinite freedoms in theory, which poses a challenge for their control and application. The shape sensing of continuum robots is vital to realise accuracy control. This letter…
Continuum soft robots are mechanical systems entirely made of continuously deformable elements. This design solution aims to bring robots closer to invertebrate animals and soft appendices of vertebrate animals (e.g., an elephant's trunk, a…
Learning a universal policy across different robot morphologies can significantly improve learning efficiency and generalization in continuous control. However, it poses a challenging multi-task reinforcement learning problem, as the…
Optimizing the morphologies and the controllers that adapt to various tasks is a critical issue in the field of robot design, aka. embodied intelligence. Previous works typically model it as a joint optimization problem and use search-based…
This paper brings together three distinct theories with the goal of quantifying shape textures with complex morphologies. Distance fields are central objects in shape representation, while topological data analysis uses algebraic topology…
Finite element methods have been successfully used to develop physics-based models of soft robots that capture the nonlinear dynamic behavior induced by continuous deformation. These high-fidelity models are therefore ideal for designing…
Soft robotics is a modern robotic paradigm for performing dexterous interactions with the surroundings via morphological flexibility. The desire for autonomous operation requires soft robots to be capable of proprioception and makes it…
Continuum soft robots are nonlinear mechanical systems with theoretically infinite degrees of freedom (DoFs) that exhibit complex behaviors. Achieving motor intelligence under dynamic conditions necessitates the development of…
Soft robots have gained significant attention due to their flexibility and safety, particularly in human-centric applications. The co-design of structure and controller in soft robotics has presented a longstanding challenge owing to the…
Fluidically actuated soft robots have promising capabilities such as inherent compliance and user safety. The control of soft robots needs to properly handle nonlinear actuation dynamics, motion constraints, workspace limitations, and…
Collaborative robots (cobots) are machines designed to work safely alongside people in human-centric environments. Providing cobots with the ability to quickly infer the inertial parameters of manipulated objects will improve their…
We present an algorithm for computing the main topological characteristics of three-dimensional bodies. The algorithm is based on a discretization of Morse theory and uses discrete analogs of smooth functions with only nondegenerate (Morse)…
In this paper, we propose a novel vision-based control algorithm for regulating the whole body shape of extensible multisection soft continuum manipulators. Contrary to existing vision-based control algorithms in the literature that…
State estimation of robotic systems is essential to implementing feedback controllers, which usually provide better robustness to modeling uncertainties than open-loop controllers. However, state estimation of soft robots is very…
The intelligent behavior of robots does not emerge solely from control systems, but from the tight coupling between body and brain, a principle known as embodied intelligence. Designing soft robots that leverage this interaction remains a…
Continuum robots possess high flexibility and redundancy, making them well suited for safe interaction in complex environments, yet their continuous deformation and nonlinear dynamics pose fundamental challenges to perception, modeling, and…
Robot co-design, jointly optimizing morphology and control policy, remains a longstanding challenge in the robotics community, where many promising robots have been developed. However, a key limitation lies in its tendency to converge to…
Rigid-bodied robots often lack compliance needed to adapt to unstructured environments, while fully soft robots, though highly adaptable, struggle with scalability and load capacity. In nature, musculoskeletal systems balance strength and…
Soft robots are inherently compliant and have a strong potential to realize human-friendly and safe robots. Despite continued research highlighting the potential of soft robots, they remain largely confined to laboratory settings. In this…