Related papers: Deformation Driven Suction Cups: A Mechanics-Based…
Recently, suction-based robotic systems with microscopic features or active suction components have been proposed to grip rough and irregular surfaces. However, sophisticated fabrication methods or complex control systems are required for…
Suction cups offer a useful gripping solution, particularly in industrial robotics and warehouse applications. Vision-based grasp algorithms, like Dex-Net, show promise but struggle to accurately perceive dark or reflective objects,…
We present a tactile sensing method enabled by the mechanical compliance of soft robots; an externally attachable photoreflective module reads surface deformation of silicone skin to estimate contact force without embedding tactile…
Engineering wear models are generally empirical and lack connections to the physical processes of debris generation at the nanoscale to microscale. Here, we thus analyze wear particle formation for sliding interfaces in dry contact with…
A key challenge in robotics is to create efficient methods for grasping objects with diverse shapes, sizes, poses, and properties. Grasping with hand-like end effectors often requires careful selection of hand orientation and finger…
Accurately digitizing physical objects is central to many applications, including virtual/augmented reality, industrial design, and e-commerce. Prior research has demonstrated efficient and faithful reconstruction of objects' geometric…
Collocated tactile sensing is a fundamental enabling technology for dexterous manipulation. However, deformable sensors introduce complex dynamics between the robot, grasped object, and environment that must be considered for fine…
Suckers are significant for robots in picking, transferring, manipulation and locomotion on diverse surfaces. However, most of the existing suckers lack high-fidelity perceptual and tactile sensing, which impedes them from resolving the…
The ability to adapt and conform to angular and uneven surfaces improves the suction cup's performance in grasping and manipulation. However, in most cases, the adaptation costs lack of required stiffness for manipulation after surface…
We propose a hardware and software pipeline to fabricate flexible wearable sensors and use them to capture deformations without line of sight. Our first contribution is a low-cost fabrication pipeline to embed multiple aligned conductive…
Conventional suction cups lack sensing capabilities for contact-aware manipulation in unstructured environments. This paper presents FlexiCup, a multimodal suction cup with wireless electronics that integrate dual-zone vision-tactile…
Capacitive technology allows building sensors that are small, compact and have high sensitivity. For this reason it has been widely adopted in robotics. In a previous work we presented a compliant skin system based on capacitive technology…
Recent advancements in soft robots, human-machine interfaces, and wearable electronics have led to an increased demand for high-performance soft tactile sensors. Tomographic tactile sensor based on resistive coupling is a novel contact…
We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…
Deformable object manipulation is a classical and challenging research area in robotics. Compared with rigid object manipulation, this problem is more complex due to the deformation properties including elastic, plastic, and elastoplastic…
Tactile sensing can provide access to information about the contact (i.e. slippage, surface feature, friction), which is out of reach of vision but crucial for manipulation. To access this information, a dense measurement of the deformation…
Solid contacts involving soft materials are important in mechanical engineering or biomechanics. Experimentally, such contacts have been shown to shrink significantly under shear, an effect which is usually explained using adhesion models.…
Conventional industrial robots often use two-fingered grippers or suction cups to manipulate objects or interact with the world. Because of their simplified design, they are unable to reproduce the dexterity of human hands when manipulating…
There is a growing need for soft robotic platforms that perform gentle, precise handling of a wide variety of objects. Existing surface-based manipulation systems, however, lack the compliance and tactile feedback needed for delicate…
Dexterous in-hand manipulation remains a foundational challenge in robotics, with progress often constrained by the prevailing paradigm of imitating the human hand. This anthropomorphic approach creates two critical barriers: 1) it limits…