Related papers: Soft Pneumatic Grippers: Topology optimization, 3D…
Optimization algorithms are pivotal in advancing various scientific and industrial fields but often encounter obstacles such as trapping in local minima, saddle points, and plateaus (flat regions), which makes the convergence to reasonable…
Kinesthetic garments provide physical feedback on body posture and motion through tailored distributions of reinforced material. Their ability to selectively stiffen a garment's response to specific motions makes them appealing for…
A key challenge in robotics is to create efficient methods for grasping objects with diverse shapes, sizes, poses, and properties. Grasping with hand-like end effectors often requires careful selection of hand orientation and finger…
Robot arms with lighter weight can reduce unnecessary energy consumption which is desirable in robotic industry. However, lightweight arms undergo undesirable elastic deformation. In this paper, the planar motion of a lightweight flexible…
This paper presents a class of 3D single-scale isotropic materials with tunable stiffness and buckling strength obtained via topology optimization and subsequent shape optimization. Compared to stiffness-optimal closed-cell plate material,…
Soft tissue manipulation is an integral aspect of most surgical procedures; however, the vast majority of surgical graspers used today are made of hard materials, such as metals or hard plastics. Furthermore, these graspers predominately…
Although various structural optimization techniques have a sound mathematical basis, the practical constructability of optimal designs poses a great challenge in the manufacturing stage. Currently, there is only a limited number of unified…
Grasp synergies represent a useful idea to reduce grasping complexity without compromising versatility. Synergies describe coordination patterns between joints, either in terms of position (joint angles) or effort (joint torques). In both…
This paper proposes a new variable stiffness soft gripper that enables high-performance grasping tasks in industrial applications. The design of the proposed monolithic soft gripper includes a middle bellow and two side bellows (i.e.,…
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…
An automated prepreg fabric draping system is being developed which consists of an array of actuated grippers. It has the ability to pick up a fabric ply and place it onto a double-curved mold surface. A previous research effort based on a…
The rise in additive manufacturing comes with unique opportunities and challenges. Massive part customization and rapid design changes are made possible with additive manufacturing, however, manufacturing industries that desire the…
In traditional topology optimization, the computing time required to iteratively update the material distribution within a design domain strongly depends on the complexity or size of the problem, limiting its application in real engineering…
This paper presents a novel phase-field-based methodology for solving minimum compliance problems in topology optimization under fixed external loads and body forces. The proposed framework characterizes the optimal structure through an…
Current rigid linkage grippers are limited in flexibility, and gripper design optimality relies on expertise, experiments, or arbitrary parameters. Our proposed rigid gripper can accommodate irregular and off-center objects through a…
Multi-suction-cup grippers are frequently employed to perform pick-and-place robotic tasks, especially in industrial settings where grasping a wide range of light to heavy objects in limited amounts of time is a common requirement. However,…
In this paper, stress-constrained topology optimization is applied to the design of compliant displacement magnification mechanisms. By formulating the objective function based on the concept of effective energy, it is not necessary to…
The engineering design of robotic grippers presents an ample design space for optimization towards robust grasping. In this paper, we adopt the reconfigurable design of the robotic gripper using a novel soft finger structure with…
Mechanical metamaterials are structures designed to exhibit an exotic response, such as topological soft modes at a surface. Here we explore single-material 3D prints of these topological structures by translating a ball-and-spring model…
This study proposes a novel topology optimization method for unsteady fluid flows induced by actively moving rigid bodies. The key idea of the proposed method is to decouple the design and analysis domains by using separate grids. The…