Related papers: Soft Responsive Materials Enhance Humanoid Safety
Human-robot interactions have been recognized to be a key element of future industrial collaborative robots (co-robots). Unlike traditional robots that work in structured and deterministic environments, co-robots need to operate in highly…
Soft robots have gained significant attention due to their flexibility and safety, particularly in human-centric applications. The co-design of structure and controller in soft robotics has presented a longstanding challenge owing to the…
Humanoid robots, with their human-like form, are uniquely suited for interacting in environments built for people. However, enabling humanoids to reason, plan, and act in complex open-world settings remains a challenge. World models, models…
When a human and a humanoid robot collaborate physically, ergonomics is a key factor to consider. Assuming a given humanoid robot, several control architectures exist nowadays to address ergonomic physical human-robot collaboration. This…
Almost all robotic systems in use have hard shells, which is limiting in many ways their full potential of physical interaction with humans or their surrounding environment. Robots with soft-shell covers offer an alternative morphology…
In this work, the novel, open-source humanoid robot, PANDORA, is presented where a majority of the structural elements are manufactured using 3D-printed compliant materials. As opposed to contemporary approaches that incorporate the elastic…
Despite recent advances in robust locomotion, bipedal robots operating in the real world remain at risk of falling. While most research focuses on preventing such events, we instead concentrate on the phenomenon of falling itself.…
Flying robots are usually rather delicate and require protective enclosures when facing the risk of collision, while high complexity and reduced payload are recurrent problems with collision-resilient flying robots. Inspired by arthropods'…
Reinforcement learning (RL) controllers have made impressive progress in humanoid locomotion and light-weight object manipulation. However, achieving robust and precise motion control with intense force interaction remains a significant…
As of today, robots exhibit impressive agility but also pose potential hazards to humans using/collaborating with them. Consequently, safety is considered the most paramount factor in human-robot interaction (HRI). This paper presents a…
Soft robotic actuators can simplify the design of controllers when operating in contact-rich environments. Importantly, their passive compliance fundamentally alters contact mechanics by smoothing impacts and distributing forces over large…
Robotic assistance has significantly improved the outcomes of open microsurgery and rigid endoscopic surgery, however is yet to make an impact in flexible endoscopic neurosurgery. Some of the most common intracranial procedures for…
Legged locomotion is a highly promising but under-researched subfield within the field of soft robotics. The compliant limbs of soft-limbed robots offer numerous benefits, including the ability to regulate impacts, tolerate falls, and…
Soft robots offer adaptability and safe interaction with complex environments. Rapid prototyping kits that allow soft robots to be assembled easily will allow different geometries to be explored quickly to suit different environments or to…
Unprecedented possibilities of quadruped robots have driven much research on the technical aspects of these robots. However, the social perception and acceptability of quadruped robots so far remain poorly understood. This work investigates…
Reliable fall recovery is critical for humanoids operating in cluttered environments. Unlike quadrupeds or wheeled robots, humanoids experience high-energy impacts, complex whole-body contact, and large viewpoint changes during a fall,…
Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…
Humanoid robots have shown success in locomotion and manipulation. Despite these basic abilities, humanoids are still required to quickly understand human instructions and react based on human interaction signals to become valuable…
Soft robots, compared to rigid robots, possess inherent advantages, including higher degrees of freedom, compliance, and enhanced safety, which have contributed to their increasing application across various fields. Among these benefits,…
Complex tasks require human collaboration since robots do not have enough dexterity. However, robots are still used as instruments and not as collaborative systems. We are introducing a framework to ensure safety in a human-robot…