Related papers: Embroidery Actuator Utilizing Embroidery Patterns …
Traditional robotic manipulator design methods require extensive, time-consuming, and manual trial and error to produce a viable design. During this process, engineers often spend their time redesigning or reshaping components as they…
Wearable exosuits assist human movement in tasks ranging from rehabilitation to daily activities; specifically, head-neck support is necessary for patients with certain neurological disorders. Rigid-link exoskeletons have shown to enable…
Miniaturised soft pneumatic actuators are crucial for robotic intervention within highly constrained anatomical pathways. This work presents the design and validation of a fibre-reinforced soft actuator at the centimetre scale for inte-…
We merge classical origami concepts with active actuation by designing origami patterns whose panels undergo prescribed metric changes. These metric changes render the system non-Euclidean, inducing non-zero Gaussian curvature at the…
This study presents the analytical modeling of a fiber-reinforced tubular conducting polymer (FTCP) actuator. The FTCP actuator is a low voltage-driven electroactive polymer arranged in an electrochemical cell. The electrochemical model is…
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…
Recently, inflatable elements integrated in robotics systems have enabled complex motions as a result of simple inputs. However, these fluidic actuators typically exhibit unimodal deformation upon inflation. Here, we present a new design…
Shape-changing interfaces are promising for users to change the physical properties of common objects. However, prevailing approaches of actuation devices require either professional equipment or materials that are not commonly accessible…
This paper presents a novel soft robotic system for a deformable mannequin that can be employed to physically realize the 3D geometry of different human bodies. The soft membrane on a mannequin is deformed by inflating several curved…
Soft actuators have drawn significant attention from researchers with an inherently compliant design to address the safety issues in physical human-robot interactions. However, they are also vulnerable and pose new challenges in the design,…
We present a controller that allows an arm-like manipulator to navigate deformable cloth garments in simulation through the use of haptic information. The main challenge of such a controller is to avoid getting tangled in, tearing or…
Despite recent advances in wearable technology, interfacing movement assistance devices with the human body remains challenging. We present a stretchable pneumatic sleeve that can anchor an exosuit actuator to the human arm with a low…
Series Elastic Actuators provide many benefits in force control of robots in unconstrained environments. These benefits include high force fidelity, extremely low impedance, low friction, and good force control bandwidth. Series Elastic…
We formalize Italian smocking, an intricate embroidery technique that gathers flat fabric into pleats along meandering lines of stitches, resulting in pleats that fold and gather where the stitching veers. In contrast to English smocking,…
Soft Robotics presents a rich canvas for free-form and continuum devices capable of exerting forces in any direction and transforming between arbitrary configurations. However, there is no current way to tractably and directly exploit the…
Biological muscles have always attracted robotics researchers due to their efficient capabilities in compliance, force generation, and mechanical work. Many groups are working on the development of artificial muscles, however,…
Mechanical metamaterials actuators achieve pre-determined input--output operations exploiting architectural features encoded within a single 3D printed element, thus removing the need of assembling different structural components. Despite…
This paper presents an interaction control algorithm for a dielectric elastomer membrane actuator. The proposed method permits efficient exploitation of the controllable stiffness of the material, allowing to use the membrane as a…
Magnetic elastomers deform under a magnetic field, working as a soft actuator. Untethered microbot made of magnetic elastomers have great potentials in performing medical tasks inside human body as mini doctors. However, the lack of a…
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…