Related papers: Monolithic Units: Actuation, Sensing, and Simulati…

Soft robotics is a field of robotic system design characterized by materials and structures that exhibit large-scale deformation, high compliance, and rich multifunctionality. The incorporation of soft and deformable structures endows soft…

Task-driven design of soft robots requires models that are physically accurate and computationally efficient, while remaining transferable across actuator designs and task scenarios. However, existing modeling approaches typically face a…

Soft robots were introduced in large part to enable safe, adaptive interaction with the environment, and this interaction relies fundamentally on contact. However, modeling and planning contact-rich interactions for soft robots remain…

Performing interferometry in an optical lattice formed by standing waves of light offers potential advantages over its free-space equivalents since the atoms can be confined and manipulated by the optical potential. We demonstrate such an…

Inspired by the vertebrate branch of the animal kingdom, articulated soft robots are robotic systems embedding elastic elements into a classic rigid (skeleton-like) structure. Leveraging on their bodies elasticity, soft robots promise to…

This paper presents a novel, modular, cable-driven soft robotic arm featuring multi-segment reconfigurability. The proposed architecture enables a stackable system with independent segment control, allowing scalable adaptation to diverse…

Robotic systems operating in unstructured environments require the ability to switch between compliant and rigid states to perform diverse tasks such as adaptive grasping, high-force manipulation, shape holding, and navigation in…

A holistic understanding of object properties across diverse sensory modalities (e.g., visual, audio, and haptic) is essential for tasks ranging from object categorization to complex manipulation. Drawing inspiration from cognitive science…

Ensuring the safe and reliable operation of collaborative robots demands robust sensor diagnostics. This paper introduces a methodology for formulating model-based constraints tailored for sensor diagnostics, featuring analytical…

High dimensional integrals are abundant in many fields of research including quantum physics. The aim of this paper is to develop efficient recursive strategies to tackle a class of high dimensional integrals having a special product…

Soft robotic instruments could navigate delicate, tortuous anatomy more safely than rigid tools, but clinical adoption is limited by insufficient tip functionalization and real-time feedback at the tissue interface. Few sensing and…

In this paper a systematic approach to the design of bulk isotropic magnetic metamaterials is presented. The role of the symmetries of both the constitutive element and the lattice are analyzed. For this purpose it is assumed that the…

We present Orbit, a unified and modular framework for robot learning powered by NVIDIA Isaac Sim. It offers a modular design to easily and efficiently create robotic environments with photo-realistic scenes and high-fidelity rigid and…

We present a self-contained, soft robotic hand composed of soft pneumatic actuator modules that are equipped with strain and pressure sensing. We show how this data can be used to discern whether a grasp was successful. Co-locating sensing…

This paper presents a novel framework to realize proprioception and closed-loop control for soft manipulators. Deformations with large elongation and large bending can be precisely predicted using geometry-based sensor signals obtained from…

This paper presents a state-estimation solution for legged robots that uses a set of low-cost, compact, and lightweight sensors to achieve low-drift pose and velocity estimation under challenging locomotion conditions. The key idea is to…

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…

In order to make robots more useful in a variety of environments, they need to be highly portable so that they can be transported to wherever they are needed, and highly storable so that they can be stored when not in use. We propose…

This paper presents an end-to-end framework for robust structure/control optimization of an industrial benchmark. When dealing with space structures, a reduction of the spacecraft mass is paramount to minimize the mission cost and maximize…

This paper presents a low-cost, centralized modular underwater robot platform, ModCube, which can be used to study swarm coordination for a wide range of tasks in underwater environments. A ModCube structure consists of multiple ModCube…