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Polymeric materials that couple deformation and electrostatics have the potential for use in soft sensors and actuators with potential applications ranging from robotic, biomedical, energy, aerospace and automotive technologies. In contrast…
Harnessing complex body dynamics has been a long-standing challenge in robotics. Soft body dynamics is a typical example of high complexity in interacting with the environment. An increasing number of studies have reported that these…
Curved elastic shells can be fabricated through molding or by harnessing residual stresses. These shells often exhibit snap-through behavior and multistability when loaded. We present a unique way of fabricating curved elastic shells that…
Successful soft robot modeling approaches appearing in recent literature have been based on a variety of distinct theories, including traditional robotic theory, continuum mechanics, and machine learning. Though specific modeling techniques…
This paper presents a novel decoder-based approach for generating manufacturable 3D structures optimized for additive manufacturing. We introduce a deep learning framework that decodes latent representations into geometrically valid,…
A flexible membrane deforming its shape in time can self-propel in a viscous fluid. Alternatively, if the membrane is anchored, its deformation will lead to fluid transport. Past work in this area focused on situations where the deformation…
Designing smart devices with tunable shapes has important applications in industrial manufacture. In this paper, we investigate the nonlinear deformation and the morphological transitions between buckling, necking, and snap-through…
Kirigami, the Japanese art of paper cutting, has recently enabled the design of stretchable mechanical metamaterials that can be easily realized by embedding arrays of periodic cuts into an elastic sheet. Here, we exploit kirigami…
Additive Manufacturing (AM) is a promising solution for handling the complexity of fabricating soft robots. However, the AM of hyperelastic materials is still challenging with a limited material range. Within this work, pellet-based 3D…
The fields of SocialVR, performance capture, and virtual try-on are often faced with a need to faithfully reproduce real garments in the virtual world. One critical task is the disentanglement of the intrinsic garment shape from…
We present a microfluidic device that enables trapping, analysis, and on-demand release of individual microparticles through membrane deformation driven by pneumatic actuation. Inspired by Pachinko-style architectures, the system features…
We propose a novel multi-section cable-driven soft robotic arm inspired by octopus tentacles along with a new modeling approach. Each section of the modular manipulator is made of a soft tubing backbone, a soft silicon arm body, and two…
The elastic response is studied of a single flexible chain grafted on a rigid plane and an ensemble of non-interacting tethered chains. It is demonstrated that the entropic theory of rubber elasticity leads to conclusions that disagree with…
Grasping, in both biological and engineered mechanisms, can be highly sensitive to the gripper and object morphology, as well as perception, and motion planning. Here we circumvent the need for feedback or precise planning by using an array…
Fiber-reinforced pneumatic twisted-and-coiled actuators (FR-PTCAs) offer high power density and compliance but their strong hysteresis and lack of intrinsic proprioception limit effective closed-loop control. This paper presents a…
Novel robotic grippers have captured increasing interests recently because of their abilities to adapt to varieties of circumstances and their powerful functionalities. Differing from traditional gripper with mechanical components-made…
Knitted fabrics are metamaterials with remarkable mechanical properties, such as extreme deformability and multiple history-dependent rest shapes. This letter shows that those properties may stem from a continuous set of metastable states…
Endoscopic endonasal approaches (EEA) have become more prevalent for minimally invasive skull base and sinus surgeries. However, rigid scopes and tools significantly decrease the surgeon's ability to operate in tight anatomical spaces and…
Robots built from soft materials can alter their shape and size in a particular profile. This shape-changing ability could be extremely helpful for rescue robots and those operating in unknown terrains and environments. In changing shape,…
Soft robots are known for their ability to perform tasks with great adaptability, enabled by their distributed, non-uniform stiffness and actuation. Bending is the most fundamental motion for soft robot design, but creating robust, and…