Related papers: COMPAct: Computational Optimization and Automated …
Legged robots, such as quadrupeds and humanoids, require high-performance actuators for efficient locomotion. Quasi-Direct-Drive (QDD) actuators with single-stage planetary gearboxes offer low inertia, high efficiency, and transparency.…
Athletic robots demand a whole-body actuation system design that utilizes motors up to the boundaries of their performance. However, creating such robots poses challenges of integrating design principles and reasoning of practical design…
Building domain-specific accelerators for autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is challenging due to a lack of systematic methodology for designing onboard compute. Balancing a computing system for a UAV requires considering both the…
This paper demonstrates the computational design of soft elastomeric pneumatic actuators using nonlinear topology optimization. An existing density- and porohyperelasticity-based topology optimization framework was extended from 2D to 3D…
CPU-FPGA heterogeneous architectures are attracting ever-increasing attention in an attempt to advance computational capabilities and energy efficiency in today's datacenters. These architectures provide programmers with the ability to…
A monoped's jump height and energy consumption depend on both, its mechanical design and control strategy. Existing co-design frameworks typically optimize for either maximum height or minimum energy, neglecting their trade-off. They also…
This work explores a spatial printing method to fabricate continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composites (CFRTPCs), which can achieve exceptional mechanical performance. For models giving complex 3D stress distribution under loads,…
Typical legged locomotion controllers are designed or trained offline. This is in contrast to many animals, which are able to locomote at birth, and rapidly improve their locomotion skills with few real-world interactions. Such motor…
Design optimization of mechanisms is a promising research area as it results in more energy-efficient machines without compromising performance. However, machine builders do not actually use the design methods described in the literature as…
The design of soft robots is still commonly driven by manual trial-and-error approaches, requiring the manufacturing of multiple physical prototypes, which in the end, is time-consuming and requires significant expertise. To reduce the…
This paper introduces a novel design method that enhances the force/torque, bendability, and controllability of soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs). The complex structure of the soft actuator is simplified by approximating it as a cantilever…
Post-training compression of Transformer models commonly relies on truncated singular value decomposition (SVD). However, enforcing a single shared subspace can degrade accuracy even at moderate compression. Sparse dictionary learning…
Modular robotics enables the development of versatile and adaptive robotic systems with autonomous reconfiguration. This paper presents a modular robotic system in which each module has independent actuation, battery power, and control,…
Underactuated manipulators reduce the number of bulky motors, thereby enabling compact and mechanically robust designs. However, fewer actuators than joints means that the manipulator can only access a specific manifold within the joint…
The performance of legged robots depends strongly on both mechanical design and control, motivating co-design approaches that jointly optimize these parameters. However, most existing co-design studies focus on optimizing link dimensions…
Robotic manipulators often face challenges in handling objects of different sizes and materials, limiting their effectiveness in practical applications. This issue is particularly pronounced when manipulating meter-scale objects or those…
Packing optimization is a prevalent problem that necessitates robust and efficient algorithms that are also simple to implement. One group of approaches is the raster methods, which rely on approximating the objects with pixelated…
Soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs) produce motions for soft robots with simple pressure input, however they require to be appropriately designed to fit the target application. Available design methods employ kinematic models and optimization…
We present a concept of constrained collaborative mobile agents (CCMA) system, which consists of multiple wheeled mobile agents constrained by a passive kinematic chain. This mobile robotic system is modular in nature, the passive kinematic…
The paper develops the Adaptive Dynamic Programming Toolbox (ADPT), which solves optimal control problems for continuous-time nonlinear systems. Based on the adaptive dynamic programming technique, the ADPT computes optimal feedback…