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Numerous soft actuators based on PneuNet design have already been proposed and extensively employed across various soft robotics applications in recent years. Despite their widespread use, a common limitation of most existing designs is…
Soft multi-axis force/torque sensors provide safe and precise force interaction. Capturing the complete degree-of-freedom of force is imperative for accurate force measurement with six-axis force/torque sensors. However, cross-axis coupling…
The research aims to expand tactile feedback beyond vibrations to various modes of stimuli, such as indentation, vibration, among others. By incorporating soft material into the design of a novel tactile actuator, we can achieve…
Track systems effectively distribute loads, augmenting traction and maneuverability on unstable terrains, leveraging their expansive contact areas. This tracked locomotion capability also aids in hand manipulation of not only regular…
We present SMORS, the first Soft fully actuated MultirOtoR System for multimodal locomotion. Unlike conventional hexarotors, SMORS is equipped with three rigid and three continuously soft arms, with each arm hosting a propeller. We create a…
The McKibben pneumatic artificial muscle is a commonly studied soft robotic actuator, and its quasistatic force-length properties have been well characterized and modeled. However, its damping and force-velocity properties are less well…
Endovascular technique has many advantages but relies strongly on operator skills and experience. Robotically steerable catheters have been developed but few are clinically available. We describe here the development of an active and…
Aerial Manipulator Systems (AMS) have garnered significant interest for their utility in aerial operations. Nonetheless, challenges related to the manipulator's limited stiffness and the coupling disturbance with manipulator movement…
Loss of upper extremity motor control and function is an unremitting symptom in post-stroke patients. This would impose hardships on accomplishing their daily life activities. Supernumerary robotic limbs (SRLs) were introduced as a solution…
Recent advances in active materials and fabrication techniques have enabled the production of cyclically self-deployable metamaterials with an expanded functionality space. However, designing metamaterials that possess continuously tunable…
Soft machines are poised to deliver significant real-world impact, with soft robotics emerging as a key sub-discipline. This field integrates biological inspiration, materials science, and embodied intelligence to create bio-robotic…
Actuating periodically an elastic filament in a viscous liquid generally breaks the constraints of Purcell's scallop theorem, resulting in the generation of a net propulsive force. This observation suggests a method to design simple…
Smart surfaces that reversibly change the interfacial friction coefficients in response to external stimuli enable a wide range of applications, such as grips, seals, brake pads, packaging films, and fabrics. Here a new concept of such a…
Soft robots have the ability to adapt to their environment, which makes them suitable for use in disaster areas and agricultural fields, where their mobility is constrained by complex terrain. One of the main challenges in developing soft…
Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…
Active solids consist of elastically coupled out-of-equilibrium units performing work. They are central to autonomous processes, such as locomotion, self-oscillations and rectification, in biological systems,designer materials and robotics.…
This paper deals with the robust force and position control problems of Series Elastic Actuators. It is shown that a Series Elastic Actuator's force control problem can be described by a second-order dynamic model which suffers from only…
Wearable and legged robot designers face multiple challenges when choosing actuation. Traditional fully actuated designs using electric motors are multifunctional but oversized and inefficient for bearing conservative loads and for being…
We present a fully edible pneumatic actuator based on gelatin-glycerol composite. The actuator is monolithic, fabricated via a molding process, and measures 90 mm in length, 20 mm in width, and 17 mm in thickness. Thanks to the composite…
Soft robots have immense potential given their inherent safety and adaptability, but challenges in soft actuator forces and design constraints have limited scaling up soft robots to larger sizes. Electrothermal shape memory alloy (SMA)…