Related papers: Geometrically Exact Hard Magneto-Elastic Cosserat …
Soft, slender structures are ubiquitous in natural and engineered systems, with broad application potential from biomimetic materials to soft robotics. However, there is a notable lack of computational tools that simultaneously preserve…
Shell structures are generally modeled based on kinematic hypotheses, where some of the parameters are preferentially evaluated in a phenomenological manner. In this article, asymptotic analysis against the underlying three-dimensional…
In this study, an inhomogeneous Cosserat rod theory is introduced and compared to the conventional homogeneous rod for modeling soft manipulators. The inhomogeneity is addressed by considering the pressure actuation as part of the rod's…
Soft robotics has been a trending topic within the robotics community for almost two decades. However, available tools for the modeling and analysis of soft robots are still limited. This paper introduces a user-friendly MATLAB toolbox,…
Soft robots, inspired by elephant trunks or octopus arms, offer extraordinary flexibility to bend, twist, and elongate in ways that rigid robots cannot. However, their motion planning remains a challenge, especially in cluttered…
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…
In this paper, we present a 2D numerical model developed to simulate the dynamics of soft, deformable particles. To accommodate significant particle deformations, the particle surface is represented as a narrow shell composed of mass points…
Soft robots are distinguished by their flexibility and adaptability, allowing them to perform nearly impossible tasks for rigid robots. However, controlling their behavior is challenging due to their nonlinear material response and infinite…
Continuum parallel robots (CPR) combine rigid actuation mechanisms with multiple elastic rods in a closed-loop topology, making forward statics challenging when rigid--continuum junctions are enforced by explicit kinematic constraints. Such…
The automatic design of embodied agents (e.g. robots) has existed for 31 years and is experiencing a renaissance of interest in the literature. To date however, the field has remained narrowly focused on two kinds of anatomically simple…
Soft robots have garnered significant attention due to their promising applications across various domains. A hallmark of these systems is their bilayer structure, where strain mismatch caused by differential expansion between layers…
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…
Pneumatic soft robots present many advantages in manipulation tasks. Notably, their inherent compliance makes them safe and reliable in unstructured and fragile environments. However, full-body shape sensing for pneumatic soft robots is…
Magnetic soft continuum robots (MSCRs) have emerged as a promising technology for minimally invasive interventions, offering enhanced dexterity and remote-controlled navigation in confined lumens. Unlike conventional guidewires with…
State estimation is one of the fundamental problems in robotics. For soft continuum robots, this task is particularly challenging because their states (poses, strains, internal wrenches, and velocities) are inherently infinite-dimensional…
Soft adhesive pads are needed for many robotics applications, and one approach is based on electroadhesion. Here we present a general analytic model and numerical results for electroadhesion for soft solids with arbitrary time-dependent…
The present article proposes a novel computational method for coupling arbitrarily curved 1D fibers with a 2D surface as defined, e.g., by the 2D surfaces of a 3D solid body or by 2D shell formulations. The fibers are modeled as 1D Cosserat…
We examine the problem of snake-like locomotion by studying a system consisting of a planar inextensible elastic rod that is able to control its spontaneous curvature. Using a Cosserat model we derive, through variational principles, the…
Using $\Gamma$-convergence arguments, we construct a nonlinear membrane-like Cosserat shell model on a curvy reference configuration starting from a geometrically nonlinear, physically linear three-dimensional isotropic Cosserat model. Even…
Almost all robotic systems in use have hard shells, which is limiting in many ways their full potential of physical interaction with humans or their surrounding environment. Robots with soft-shell covers offer an alternative morphology…