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Wearable and legged robot designers face multiple challenges when choosing actuation. Traditional fully actuated designs using electric motors are multifunctional but oversized and inefficient for bearing conservative loads and for being…
We propose a control pipeline for SAG (Searching, Approaching, and Grasping) of objects, based on a decoupled arm kinematic chain and impedance control, which integrates image-based visual servoing (IBVS). The kinematic decoupling allows…
Intrinsically elastic robots surpass their rigid counterparts in a range of different characteristics. By temporarily storing potential energy and subsequently converting it to kinetic energy, elastic robots are capable of highly dynamic…
This paper presents a deep generative modeling framework for controllably synthesizing implied volatility surfaces (IVSs) using a variational autoencoder (VAE). Unlike conventional data-driven models, our approach provides explicit control…
Recently, several approaches have attempted to combine motion generation and control in one loop to equip robots with reactive behaviors, that cannot be achieved with traditional time-indexed tracking controllers. These approaches however…
This paper introduces DextAIRity, an approach to manipulate deformable objects using active airflow. In contrast to conventional contact-based quasi-static manipulations, DextAIRity allows the system to apply dense forces on out-of-contact…
The research aims to expand tactile feedback beyond vibrations to various modes of stimuli, such as indentation, vibration, among others. By incorporating soft material into the design of a novel tactile actuator, we can achieve…
Robotic legs have bimodal operations: swing phases when the leg needs to move quickly in the air (high-speed, low-force) and stance phases when the leg bears the weight of the system (low-speed, high-force). Sizing a traditional…
We describe a fluidic actuator design that replaces the sealed chamber of a hydraulic cylinder using a soft actuator to provide compliant linear compression with a large force ($\geq$100 N) at a low operation pressure ($\leq$50 kPa) for a…
We design, build, and thoroughly test a new type of actuator dubbed viscoelastic liquid cooled actuator (VLCA) for robotic applications. VLCAs excel in the following five critical axes of performance: energy efficiency, torque density,…
Granular jamming has recently become popular in soft robotics with widespread applications including industrial gripping, surgical robotics and haptics. Previous work has investigated the use of various techniques that exploit the nature of…
Variational Autoencoders (VAE) are popular generative models used to sample from complex data distributions. Despite their empirical success in various machine learning tasks, significant gaps remain in understanding their theoretical…
This paper addresses the closed-loop control of an actuator with both a continuous input variable (motor torque) and a discrete input variable (mode selection). In many applications, robots have to bear large loads while moving slowly and…
Modulating the stiffness of soft actuators is crucial for improving the efficiency of interaction with the environment. However, current stiffness modulation mechanisms are hard to achieve high lateral stiffness and a wide range of bending…
This work proposes variational autoencoders (VAEs) to predict a vehicle's jerk signals from torque demand in the context of limited real-world drivetrain datasets. We implement both unconditional and conditional VAEs, trained on…
Dynamically manipulating carriers in van der Waals heterostructures could enable solid-state quantum simulators with tunable lattice parameters. A key requirement is forming deep potential wells to reliably trap excitations. Here, we report…
Granular jamming is a popular soft robotics technology that has seen recent widespread applications including industrial gripping, surgical robotics and haptics. However, to date the field has not fully exploited the fundamental science of…
Flexible Electronics (FE) technology offers uniquecharacteristics in electronic manufacturing, providing ultra-low-cost, lightweight, and environmentally-friendly alternatives totraditional rigid electronics. These characteristics enable a…
The growing complexity of model parameters underscores the significance of pre-trained models. However, deployment constraints often necessitate models of varying sizes, exposing limitations in the conventional pre-training and fine-tuning…
Semi-active vibration reduction techniques are defined as techniques in which controlled actions do not operate directly on the system's degrees of freedom (as in the case of active vibration control) but on the system's parameters, i.e.,…