Related papers: Soft Surfaced Vision-Based Tactile Sensing for Bip…
Grasping objects whose physical properties are unknown is still a great challenge in robotics. Most solutions rely entirely on visual data to plan the best grasping strategy. However, to match human abilities and be able to reliably pick…
In this paper, we present a touch technology to achieve tactile interactivity for human-robot interaction (HRI) in soft robotics. By combining a capacitive touch sensor with an online solid mechanics simulation provided by the SOFA…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
Tactile sensors, which provide information about the physical properties of objects, are an essential component of robotic systems. The visuotactile sensing technology with the merits of high resolution and low cost has facilitated the…
Quadrupedal mobile robots can traverse a wider range of terrain types than their wheeled counterparts but do not perform the same on all terrain types. These robots are prone to undesirable behaviours like sinking and slipping on…
Robotics research has long sought to give robots the ability to perceive the physical world through touch in an analogous manner to many biological systems. Developing such tactile capabilities is important for numerous emerging…
This paper presents a novel vision-based proprioception approach for a soft robotic finger that can estimate and reconstruct tactile interactions in both terrestrial and aquatic environments. The key to this system lies in the finger's…
Walking is among the most common human activities where the feet can gather rich tactile information from the ground. The dynamic contact between the feet and the ground generates vibration signals that can be sensed by the foot skin. While…
In this work, we report on the integrated sensorimotor control of the Pisa/IIT SoftHand, an anthropomorphic soft robot hand designed around the principle of adaptive synergies, with the BRL tactile fingertip (TacTip), a soft biomimetic…
Multi-legged robots with six or more legs are not in common use, despite designs with superior stability, maneuverability, and a low number of actuators being available for over 20 years. This may be in part due to the difficulty in…
Tactile sensing is critical in advanced interactive systems by emulating the human sense of touch to detect stimuli. Vision-based tactile sensors are promising for providing multimodal capabilities and high robustness, yet existing…
The biological skin enables animals to sense various stimuli. Extensive efforts have been made recently to develop smart skin-like sensors to extend the capabilities of biological skins; however, simultaneous sensing of several types of…
Reinforcement learning (RL) for bipedal locomotion has recently demonstrated robust gaits over moderate terrains using only proprioceptive sensing. However, such blind controllers will fail in environments where robots must anticipate and…
Deep learning and reinforcement learning methods have been shown to enable learning of flexible and complex robot controllers. However, the reliance on large amounts of training data often requires data collection to be carried out in…
Estimation of tactile properties from vision, such as slipperiness or roughness, is important to effectively interact with the environment. These tactile properties help us decide which actions we should choose and how to perform them.…
Soft robotics is an emerging field that yields promising results for tasks that require safe and robust interactions with the environment or with humans, such as grasping, manipulation, and human-robot interaction. Soft robots rely on…
Despite significant advances in touch and force transduction, tactile sensing is still far from ubiquitous in robotic manipulation. Existing methods for building touch sensors have proven difficult to integrate into robot fingers due to…
How are robots becoming smarter at interacting with their surroundings? Recent advances have reshaped how robots use tactile sensing to perceive and engage with the world. Tactile sensing is a game-changer, allowing robots to embed…
Humans are able to negotiate downstep behaviors -- both planned and unplanned -- with remarkable agility and ease. The goal of this paper is to systematically study the translation of this human behavior to bipedal walking robots, even if…
Passive deformation due to compliance is a commonly used benefit of soft robots, providing opportunities to achieve robust actuation with few active degrees of freedom. Soft growing robots in particular have shown promise in navigation of…