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Separating thin, flexible layers that must be individually grasped is a common but challenging manipulation primitive for most off-the-shelf grippers. A prominent example arises in clinical settings: the opening of sterile flat pouches for…
The complex physical properties of highly deformable materials such as clothes pose significant challenges fanipulation systems. We present a novel visual feedback dictionary-based method for manipulating defoor autonomous robotic mrmable…
Aerial robots have garnered significant attention due to their potential applications in various industries, such as inspection, search and rescue, and drone delivery. Successful missions often depend on the ability of these robots to grasp…
Conventional soft pneumatic actuators, typically based on hollow elastomeric chambers, often suffer from small structural support and require costly geometry-specific redesigns for multimodal functionality. Porous materials such as foam,…
Traditional robotic mechanisms contain a series of rigid links connected by rotational joints that provide powered motion, all of which is controlled by a central processor. By contrast, analogous mechanisms found in nature, such as octopus…
The fields of soft and bio-inspired robotics promise to imbue synthetic systems with capabilities found in the natural world. However, many of these biological capabilities are yet to be realized. For example, vines in nature direct growth…
Deformable object manipulation is a classical and challenging research area in robotics. Compared with rigid object manipulation, this problem is more complex due to the deformation properties including elastic, plastic, and elastoplastic…
Soft-growing robots (i.e., vine robots) are a promising class of soft robots that allow for navigation and growth in tightly confined environments. However, these robots remain challenging to model and control due to the complex interplay…
This paper presents a passive control method for multiple degrees of freedom in a soft pneumatic robot through the combination of flow resistor tubes with series inflatable actuators. We designed and developed these 3D printed resistors…
Viscophoresis refers to the transport of suspended nanoparticles driven by a steep viscosity gradient. This work investigates this new transport effect using a random walk simulation. By modelling position-dependent Brownian motion,…
Soft growing robots, are a type of robots that are designed to move and adapt to their environment in a similar way to how plants grow and move with potential applications where they could be used to navigate through tight spaces, dangerous…
Soft robotics is a swiftly evolving field. Pneumatic actuators are suitable for driving soft robots because of their superior performance. However, their control is challenging due to the hysteresis characteristics. In response to this…
Optical metasurfaces have been enabling reduced footprint and power consumption, as well as faster speeds, in the context of analog computing and image processing. While various image processing and optical computing functionalities have…
We present a proprioceptive teleoperation system that uses a reflexive grasping algorithm to enhance the speed and robustness of pick-and-place tasks. The system consists of two manipulators that use quasi-direct-drive actuation to provide…
Foam is a canonical example of disordered soft matter where local force balance leads to the competition of many metastable configurations. Here we present an experimental and theoretical framework for "active foam" where an individual…
Biological systems, such as the octopus, exhibit masterful cross-scale manipulation by adaptively reconfiguring their entire form, a capability that remains elusive in robotics. Conventional soft grippers, while compliant, are mostly…
Kirigami metamaterial sheets and tubes, owing to their capacity to undergo large elastic deformations while developing three-dimensional surface textures, have enormous potential as skins for soft robots. Here, we propose to use kirigami…
In disaster response and situation assessment, robots have great potential in reducing the risks to the safety and health of first responders. As the situations encountered and the required capabilities of the robots deployed in such…
Soft pneumatic gripping strategies are often based on pressurized actuation of structures made of soft elastomeric materials, which limits designs in terms of size, weight, achievable forces, and ease of fabrication. On the other hand,…
Over the past few decades, efforts have been made towards robust robotic grasping, and therefore dexterous manipulation. The soft gripper has shown their potential in robust grasping due to their inherent properties-low, control complexity,…