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Grasping using an aerial robot can have many applications ranging from infrastructure inspection and maintenance to precise agriculture. However, aerial grasping is a challenging problem since the robot has to maintain an accurate position…
Tip-extending soft robots that "grow" via pneumatic eversion of their body material have demonstrated applications in exploration of cluttered environments. During growth, the motion and force of the robot tip can be controlled in three…
Future brain-machine interfaces, prosthetics, and intelligent soft robotics will require integrating artificial neuromorphic devices with biological systems. Due to their poor biocompatibility, circuit complexity, low energy efficiency, and…
Trapping nanoscopic objects to observe their dynamic behaviour for extended periods of time is an ongoing quest. Particularly, sub-100nm transparent objects are hard to catch and most techniques rely on immobilisation or transient diffusion…
Fast, robust, and flexible part feeding is essential for enabling automation of low volume, high variance assembly tasks. An actuated vision-based solution on a traditional vibratory feeder, referred to here as a vision trap, should in…
Diffusion policies have recently emerged as a powerful class of visuomotor controllers for robot manipulation, offering stable training and expressive multi-modal action modeling. However, existing approaches typically treat action…
This paper introduces a novel compliant mechanism combining lightweight and energy dissipation for aerial physical interaction. Weighting 400~g at take-off, the mechanism is actuated in the forward body direction, enabling precise position…
Optothermal interaction of active colloidal matter can facilitate environmental cues which can influence the dynamics of active soft matter systems. The optically induced thermal effect can be harnessed to study non-equilibrium…
Everting, soft growing vine robots benefit from reduced friction with their environment, which allows them to navigate challenging terrain. Vine robots can use air pouches attached to their sides for lateral steering. However, when all…
Jellyfish cyborgs present a promising avenue for soft robotic systems, leveraging the natural energy-efficiency and adaptability of biological systems. Here we demonstrate a novel approach to predicting and controlling jellyfish locomotion…
Plants are increasingly becoming a source of inspiration for robotics and engineers to develop bioinspired, adaptive, and multifunctional machines. In this study, we propose a bioinspired aquatic machine that mimics the fruit of the water…
The legged robots with variable stiffness actuators (VSAs) can achieve energy-efficient and versatile locomotion. However, equipping legged robots with VSAs in real-world application is usually restricted by (i) the redundant mechanical…
Simulating soft robots in cluttered environments remains an open problem due to the challenge of capturing complex dynamics and interactions with the environment. Furthermore, fast simulation is desired for quickly exploring robot behaviors…
Understanding how structural flexibility affects the properties of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) is crucial for the design of better MOFs for targeted applications. Flexible MOFs can be studied with molecular dynamics simulations, whose…
Robotic manipulators capable of regulating both compliance and stiffness offer enhanced operational safety and versatility. Here, we introduce Worm Gear-based Adaptive Variable Elasticity (WAVE), a variable stiffness actuator (VSA) that…
Shape-morphing robots have shown benefits in industrial grasping. We propose form-flexible grippers for adaptive grasping. The design is based on the hybrid jamming and suction mechanism, which deforms to handle objects that vary…
Robust closed-loop locomotion remains challenging for soft quadruped robots due to high-dimensional dynamics, actuator hysteresis, and difficult-to-model contact interactions, while conventional proprioception provides limited information…
This paper addresses a fundamental problem of visuomotor policy learning for robotic manipulation: how to enhance robustness in out-of-distribution execution errors or dynamically re-routing trajectories, where the model relies solely on…
Active Visual Exploration (AVE) is a task that involves dynamically selecting observations (glimpses), which is critical to facilitate comprehension and navigation within an environment. While modern AVE methods have demonstrated impressive…
This paper presents the first design of a soft, 3D-printed in flexible filament, lightweight UAV, capable of performing full-body perching using soft tendons, specifically landing and stabilizing on pipelines and irregular surfaces without…