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Microfluidic devices manufactured from soft polymeric materials have emerged as a paradigm for cheap, disposable and easy-to-prototype fluidic platforms for integrating chemical and biological assays and analyses. The interplay between the…
Pneumatic soft robots are typically fabricated by molding, a manual fabrication process that requires skilled labor. Additive manufacturing has the potential to break this limitation and speed up the fabrication process but struggles with…
This paper presents a compact system, OpenPneu, to support the pneumatic actuation for multi-chambers on soft robots. Micro-pumps are employed in the system to generate airflow and therefore no extra input as compressed air is needed. Our…
We describe a fluidic actuator design that replaces the sealed chamber of a hydraulic cylinder using a soft actuator to provide compliant linear compression with a large force ($\geq$100 N) at a low operation pressure ($\leq$50 kPa) for a…
Inexpensive, portable lab-on-a-chip devices would revolutionize fields like environmental monitoring and global health, but current microfluidic chips are tethered to extensive off-chip hardware. Insects, however, are self-contained and…
Compared to traditional rigid robotics, soft robotics has attracted increasing attention due to its advantages as compliance, safety, and low cost. As an essential part of soft robotics, the soft robotic gripper also shows its superior…
This paper provides a novel surface design and experimental evaluation of a super-twisting algorithm (STA) based control for hydraulic cylinder actuators. The proposed integral sliding surface allows to track a sufficiently smooth reference…
While its biological significance is well-documented, its application in soft robotics, particularly for the transport of fragile and irregularly shaped objects, remains underexplored. This study presents a modular soft robotic actuator…
Lab-on-a-chip (LOC) forms the basis of the new-generation portable analytical systems. LOC allows the manipulation of ultralow flows of liquid reagents and multistep reactions on a microfluidic chip, which requires a robust and precise…
Soft actuators are receiving increasing attention from the engineering community, not only in research but even for industrial applications. Among soft actuators, fibre-reinforced Bending Fluidic Actuators (BFAs) became very popular thanks…
We demonstrate with a fully quantum-mechanical approach that graphene can function as gate-controllable transistors for pumped spin currents, i.e., a stream of angular momentum induced by the precession of adjacent magnetizations, which…
We develop a one-dimensional model for the unsteady fluid--structure interaction (FSI) between a soft-walled microchannel and viscous fluid flow within it. A beam equation, which accounts for both transverse bending rigidity and nonlinear…
In solids, frequent electron-electron collisions can induce collective, fluid-like electron transport. While this regime offers a powerful framework for exploring many-body phenomena, there is still a lack in functional electronic device…
In this paper, we present a modular pressure control system called PneuDrive that can be used for large-scale, pneumatically-actuated soft robots. The design is particularly suited for situations which require distributed pressure control…
Small volume fluid handling in single and multiphase microfluidics provides a promising strategy for efficient bio-chemical assays, low-cost point-of-care diagnostics and new approaches to scientific discoveries. However multiple barriers…
We present a novel framework to explore neural control and design of complex fluidic systems with dynamic solid boundaries. Our system features a fast differentiable Navier-Stokes solver with solid-fluid interface handling, a…
Alternative computing approaches that interface readily with physical systems are well suited for embedded control of those systems. We demonstrate finite state machines implemented as pneumatic circuits of microfluidic valves, and we…
Soft and flexible conductors are essential in the development of soft robots, wearable electronics, as well as electronic tissue and implants. However, conventional soft conductors are inherently characterized by a large change in…
Fluid flow networks are ubiquitous and can be found in a broad range of contexts, from human-made systems such as water supply networks to living systems like animal and plant vasculature. In many cases, the elements forming these networks…
While rigid robots are extensively used in various applications, they are limited in the tasks they can perform and can be unsafe in close human-robot interactions. Soft robots on the other hand surpass the capabilities of rigid robots in…