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While the grasping capability of robotic grippers has shown significant development, the ability to manipulate objects within the hand is still limited. One explanation for this limitation is the lack of controlled contact variation between…
This paper presents design, fabrication and control of a compliant 2D manipulator, a so called soft actuator. Our focus is on fiber-reinforced elastomer actuators driven by a constant pressure hydraulic supply and modulated on/off valves.…
Manipulation surfaces indirectly control and reposition objects by actively modifying their shape or properties rather than directly gripping objects. These surfaces, equipped with dense actuator arrays, generate dynamic deformations.…
Recently, inflatable elements integrated in robotics systems have enabled complex motions as a result of simple inputs. However, these fluidic actuators typically exhibit unimodal deformation upon inflation. Here, we present a new design…
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…
Functional magnetic composites capable of large deformation, load bearing, and multifunctional motion are essential for next-generation adaptive soft robots. Here, we present muscle-inspired magnetic actuators (MMA), additively manufactured…
Multi-agent robotic manipulation remains challenging due to the combined demands of coordination, grasp stability, and collision avoidance in shared workspaces. To address these challenges, we propose the Adaptive Dynamic Modality Diffusion…
Soft robotic grippers gently and safely manipulate delicate objects due to their inherent adaptability and softness. Limited by insufficient stiffness and imprecise force control, conventional soft grippers are not suitable for applications…
The challenge in reconfigurable manipulation of sound waves using metasurfaces lies in achieving precise control over acoustic behavior while developing efficient and practical tuning methods for structural configurations. However, most…
Manipulating deformable linear objects (DLOs) is challenging due to their complex dynamics and the need for safe interaction in contact-rich environments. Most existing models focus on shape prediction alone and fail to account for contact…
Origami structures enabled by folding and unfolding can create complex 3D shapes. However, even a small 3D shape can have large 2D unfoldings. The huge initial dimension of the 2D flattened structure makes fabrication difficult, and defeats…
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…
Fully soft bistable mechanisms have shown extensive applications ranging from soft robotics, wearable devices, and medical tools, to energy harvesting. However, the lack of design and fabrication methods that are easy and potentially…
Articulated object manipulation is a critical capability for robots to perform various tasks in real-world scenarios. Composed of multiple parts connected by joints, articulated objects are endowed with diverse functional mechanisms through…
Performing long-term experimentation or large-scale data collection for machine learning in the field of soft robotics is challenging, due to the hardware robustness and experimental flexibility required. In this work, we propose a modular…
Deformable object manipulation (DOM) for robots has a wide range of applications in various fields such as industrial, service and health care sectors. However, compared to manipulation of rigid objects, DOM poses significant challenges for…
We present DisCo, a distributed algorithm for contact-rich, multi-robot tasks. DisCo is a distributed contact-implicit trajectory optimization algorithm, which allows a group of robots to optimize a time sequence of forces to objects and to…
Soft robots employing compliant materials and deformable structures offer great potential for wearable devices that are comfortable and safe for human interaction. However, achieving both structural integrity and compliance for comfort…
A kitchen assistant needs to operate human-scale objects, such as cabinets and ovens, in unmapped environments with dynamic obstacles. Autonomous interactions in such environments require integrating dexterous manipulation and fluid…
Dynamic Object-aware SLAM (DOS) exploits object-level information to enable robust motion estimation in dynamic environments. Existing methods mainly focus on identifying and excluding dynamic objects from the optimization. In this paper,…