Related papers: Exploring Stiffness Gradient Effects in Magnetical…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are no good dynamic simulation tools to predict the motion or performance of a microrobot as it moves against a substrate. At…
Inspired by the vertebrate branch of the animal kingdom, articulated soft robots are robotic systems embedding elastic elements into a classic rigid (skeleton-like) structure. Leveraging on their bodies elasticity, soft robots promise to…
Purpose of Review: This review provides an overview of the state of the art in bioinspired soft robotics with by examining advancements in actuation, functionality, modeling, and control. Recent Findings: Recent research into actuation…
The ability to achieve and maintain inverted poses is essential for unlocking the full agility of miniature blimp robots (MBRs). However, developing reliable inverted control strategies for MBRs remains challenging due to their complex and…
Granular media near jamming exhibit fascinating properties, which can be harnessed to create jammed-granulate metamaterials: materials whose characteristics arise not only from the shape and material properties of the particles at the…
This paper proposes a hybrid-gain finite-time sliding-mode control (HG-FTSMC) strategy for a class of perturbed nonlinear systems. The controller combines a finite-time reaching law that drives the sliding variable to a predefined boundary…
Resonant metasurfaces driven by bound states in the continuum (BIC) offer an intriguing approach to engineer high-Q resonances. Merging multiple BICs in the momentum space could further enhance the Q-factor as well as its robustness to…
As a pinning-controlled permanent magnet, tailoring the cellular nanostructure of samarium-cobalt-based 1:7-type (SmCo-1:7) magnets remains crucial for improving magnetic performance. Jointing forward and inverse machine learning models…
Thin beams made of magnetorheological elastomers embedded with hard magnetic particles (hard-MREs) are capable of large deflections under an applied magnetic field. We propose a comprehensive framework, comprising a beam model and 3D finite…
Continuum soft robots are inherently underactuated and subject to intrinsic input constraints, making dynamic control particularly challenging, especially in hybrid rigid-soft robots. While most existing methods focus on quasi-static…
Soft robotics is a rapidly growing area of robotics research that would benefit greatly from design automation, given the challenges of manually engineering complex, compliant, and generally non-intuitive robot body plans and behaviors. It…
This paper introduces a learning-based modeling framework for a magnetically steerable soft suction device designed for endoscopic endonasal brain tumor resection. The device is miniaturized (4 mm outer diameter, 2 mm inner diameter, 40 mm…
In this paper, we propose a real-world benchmark for studying robotic learning in the context of functional manipulation: a robot needs to accomplish complex long-horizon behaviors by composing individual manipulation skills in functionally…
Mechanical metamaterials are periodic lattice structures with complex unit cell architectures that can achieve extraordinary mechanical properties beyond the capability of bulk materials. A new class of metamaterials is proposed, whose…
Reconfigurable robots are at the forefront of robotics innovation due to their unmatched versatility and adaptability in addressing various tasks through collaborative operations. This paper explores the design and implementation of a novel…
Additive manufacturing technologies enable the production of complex and bioinspired shapes using magneto-responsive materials, which find diverse applications in soft robotics. Particularly, the development of composites with controlled…
In contrast with the diversity of materials found in nature, most robots are designed with some combination of aluminum, stainless steel, and 3D-printed filament. Additionally, robotic systems are typically assumed to follow basic…
Soft elastic composite materials containing particulate rigid inclusions in a soft elastic matrix are candidates for developing soft actuators or tunable damping devices. The possibility to reversibly drive the rigid inclusions within such…
A novel semi-analytical method is proposed to develop the pseudo-rigid-body~(PRB) model of robots made of highly flexible members (HFM), such as flexures and continuum robots, with no limit on the degrees of freedom of the PRB model. The…
Variable impedance model predictive control (MPC) formulations often treat joint stiffness as an instantaneous decision variable. The resulting feasible set strictly contains the physically realizable set under first-order actuator…