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Grasping using an aerial robot can have many applications ranging from infrastructure inspection and maintenance to precise agriculture. However, aerial grasping is a challenging problem since the robot has to maintain an accurate position…
Microspine grippers are small spines commonly found on insect legs that reinforce surface interaction by engaging with asperities to increase shear force and traction. An array of such microspines, when integrated into the limbs or…
Climbing robots face significant challenges when navigating unstructured environments, where reliable attachment to irregular surfaces is critical. We present a novel mobile climbing robot equipped with compliant pin-array structured…
In lunar and planetary exploration, legged robots have attracted significant attention as an alternative to conventional wheeled robots, which struggle to traverse rough and uneven terrain. To enable locomotion over highly irregular and…
This paper presents a gripper capable of grasping and recognizing terrain shapes for mobile robots in extreme environments. Multi-limbed climbing robots with grippers are effective on rough terrains, such as cliffs and cave walls. However,…
Protecting and restoring forest ecosystems has become an important conservation issue. Although various robots have been used for field data collection to protect forest ecosystems, the complex terrain and dense canopy make the data…
Rapid and versatile object manipulation in air is an open challenge. An energy-efficient and adaptive soft gripper combined with an agile aerial vehicle could revolutionize aerial robotic manipulation in areas such as warehousing. This…
Soft grippers are receiving growing attention due to their compliance-based interactive safety and dexterity. Hybrid gripper (soft actuators enhanced by rigid constraints) is a new trend in soft gripper design. With right structural…
Contrary to the stunning feats observed in birds of prey, aerial manipulation and grasping with flying robots still lack versatility and agility. Conventional approaches using rigid manipulators require precise positioning and are subject…
Applying suction grippers in unstructured environments is a challenging task because of depth and tilt errors in vision systems, requiring additional costs in elaborate sensing and control. To reduce additional costs, suction grippers with…
Although wheeled robots have been predominant for planetary exploration, their geometry limits their capabilities when traveling over steep slopes, through rocky terrains, and in microgravity. Legged robots equipped with grippers are a…
This paper presents SCALER, a versatile free-climbing multi-limbed robot that is designed to achieve tightly coupled simultaneous locomotion and dexterous grasping. While existing quadrupedal-limbed robots have demonstrated impressive…
This paper presents a modular in-pipeline climbing robot with a novel compliant foldable OmniCrawler mechanism. The circular cross-section of the OmniCrawler module enables a holonomic motion to facilitate the alignment of the robot in the…
Robotic grasping is an essential capability, playing a critical role in enabling robots to physically interact with their surroundings. Despite extensive research, challenges remain due to the diverse shapes and properties of target…
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…
We present CloudGripper, an open source cloud robotics testbed, consisting of a scalable, space and cost-efficient design constructed as a rack of 32 small robot arm work cells. Each robot work cell is fully enclosed and features individual…
Future planetary exploration missions will require reaching challenging regions such as craters and steep slopes. Such regions are ubiquitous and present science-rich targets potentially containing information regarding the planet's…
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…
This paper explores the design strategies for hybrid pole- or trunk-climbing robots, focusing on methods to inform design decisions and assess metrics such as adaptability and performance. A wheeled-grasping hybrid robot with modular,…
Rapid aerial grasping through robots can lead to many applications that utilize fast and dynamic picking and placing of objects. Rigid grippers traditionally used in aerial manipulators require high precision and specific object geometries…