Related papers: Toggling stiffness via multistability
Torque and continuous rotation are fundamental methods of actuation and manipulation in rigid robots. Soft robot arms use soft materials and structures to mimic the passive compliance of biological arms that bend and extend. This use of…
Inspired by the quest for shape-shifting structures in a range of applications, we show how to create morphable structural materials using a neutrally stable unit cell as a building block. This unit cell is a self-stressed hinged structure…
Multi-step pathways, constituted of a sequence of reconfigurations, are central to a wide variety of natural and man-made systems. Such pathways autonomously execute in self-guided processes such as protein folding and self-assembly, but…
Incremental stiffness characterizes the variation of a material's force response to a small deformation change. Typically materials have an incremental stiffness that is fixed and positive, but recent technologies, such as super-lenses, low…
Magnetic-responsive composites that consist of soft matrix embedded with hard-magnetic particles have recently been demonstrated as robust soft active materials for fast-transforming actuation. However, the deformation of the functional…
Reinforcement-learned locomotion enables legged robots to perform highly dynamic motions but often accompanies time-consuming manual tuning of joint stiffness. This paper introduces a novel control paradigm that integrates variable…
Flexible mechanical metamaterials possess repeating structural motifs that imbue them with novel, exciting properties including programmability, anomalous elastic moduli and nonlinear and robust response. We address such structures via…
In this paper, we study modulation instabilities (MI) in a one-dimensional chain configuration of a flexible mechanical metamaterial (flexMM). Using the lumped element approach, flexMMs can be modeled by a coupled system of discrete…
Natural systems integrate the work of many sub-units (cells) toward a large-scale unified goal (morphological and behavioral), which can counteract the effects of unexpected experiences, damage, or simply changes in tasks demands. In this…
This paper presents a new stiffness modulation mechanism that enables infinite-range stiffness modulation in a fast manner. The proposed stiffness modulation mechanism can help improve many robot environment interaction applications such as…
Pattern-forming metamaterials feature microstructures specifically designed to change the material's macroscopic properties due to internal instabilities. These can be triggered either by mechanical deformation or, in the case of active…
Dynamic manipulation of flexible objects such as fabric, which is difficult to modelize, is one of the major challenges in robotics. With the development of deep learning, we are beginning to see results in simulations and in some actual…
In this paper, we present the realization of an elastic metamaterial allowing independent tuning of negative density and stiffness for elastic waves propagating along a designated direction. In electromagnetic (or acoustic) metamaterials,…
Architected materials achieve unique mechanical properties through precisely engineered microstructures that minimize material usage. However, a key challenge of low-density materials is balancing high stiffness with stable deformability up…
Magnetic soft continuum robots are capable of bending with remote control in confined space environments, and they have been applied in various bioengineering contexts. As one type of ferromagnetic soft continuums, the Magnetically Induced…
Based on the idea of variable stiffness mechanisms, a variety of such mechanisms is shown in this work. Specifically, 2-DOF parallel kinematic machines equipped with redundant actuators and non-linear springs in the actuated joints are…
Nature-inspired stochastic metamaterials with disordered and multiscale architectures have shown great promise towards extraordinary functionalities, including high mechanical resilience, stress modulation and biased stiffness…
Based on the Maxwell-Beatty reciprocity theorem, static non-reciprocity has been realized by using nonlinearity, but this non-reciprocity has strict restrictions on input amplitude and structure size (number of units). Here, we propose a…
Topological states can be used to control the mechanical properties of a material along an edge or around a localized defect. The surface rigidity of elastic networks is characterized by a bulk topological invariant called the polarization;…
Modular Active Cell Robots (MACROs) are a design paradigm for modular robotic hardware that uses only two components, namely actuators and passive compliant joints. Under the MACRO approach, a large number of actuators and joints are…