Related papers: Reconciling distributed compliance with high-perfo…

Precise and high-fidelity force control is critical for new generations of robots that interact with humans and unknown environments. Mobile robots, such as wearable devices and legged robots, must also be lightweight to accomplish their…

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…

Imagine a robot that can assemble a functional product from the individual parts presented in any configuration to the robot. Designing such a robotic system is a complex problem which presents several open challenges. To bypass these…

Many high precision (dis)assembly tasks are still being performed by humans, whereas this is an ideal opportunity for automation. This paper provides a framework which enables a non-expert human operator to teach a robotic arm to do complex…

Semi-autonomous telerobotic systems allow both humans and robots to exploit their strengths, while enabling personalized execution of a task. However, for new soft robots with degrees of freedom dissimilar to those of human operators, it is…

Magnetic soft continuum robots (MSCRs) have emerged as powerful devices in endovascular interventions owing to their hyperelastic fibre matrix and enhanced magnetic manipulability. Effective closed-loop control of tethered magnetic devices…

In this study, we present a novel method for enhancing the computational efficiency of whole-body control for humanoid robots, a challenge accentuated by their high degrees of freedom. The reduced-dimension rigid body dynamics of a floating…

Envisioned applications for humanoid robots call for the design of balancing and walking controllers. While promising results have been recently achieved, robust and reliable controllers are still a challenge for the control community…

Robots built from soft materials will inherently apply lower environmental forces than their rigid counterparts, and therefore may be more suitable in sensitive settings with unintended contact. However, these robots' applied forces result…

Formal verification of robotic tasks requires a simple yet conformant model of the used robot. We present the first work on generating reachset conformant models for robotic contact tasks considering hybrid (mixed continuous and discrete)…

Soft robots have immense potential given their inherent safety and adaptability, but challenges in soft actuator forces and design constraints have limited scaling up soft robots to larger sizes. Electrothermal shape memory alloy (SMA)…

Control of soft robotic manipulators remains a challenge for designs with advanced capabilities and novel actuation. Two significant limitations are multi-axis, three-dimensional motion of soft bodies alongside actuator dynamics and…

The ability to deal with articulated objects is very important for robots assisting humans. In this work, a framework to robustly and adaptively operate common doors, using an autonomous mobile manipulator, is proposed. To push forward the…

This paper introduces a simulation study of fluid actuated multi-driven closed system as spherical mobile robot called "RollRoller". Robot's mechanism design consists of two essential parts: tubes to lead a core and mechanical controlling…

Inflated continuum robots are promising for a variety of navigation tasks, but controlling their motion with a small number of actuators is challenging. These inflated beam robots tend to buckle under compressive loads, producing extremely…

Simulating soft robots in cluttered environments remains an open problem due to the challenge of capturing complex dynamics and interactions with the environment. Furthermore, fast simulation is desired for quickly exploring robot behaviors…

We will present a new general framework for robust and adaptive control that allows for distributed and scalable learning and control of large systems of interconnected linear subsystems. The control method is demonstrated for a linear…

Soft robots show compliance and have infinite degrees of freedom. Thanks to these properties, such robots can be leveraged for surgery, rehabilitation, biomimetics, unstructured environment exploring, and industrial grippers. In this case,…

Robots operating in human-centric environments must be both robust to disturbances and provably safe from collisions. Achieving these properties simultaneously and efficiently remains a central challenge. While Dynamic Movement Primitives…

Soft robots offer a frontier in robotics with enormous potential for safe human-robot interaction and agility in uncertain environments. A stepping stone towards unlocking their potential is a control theory tailored to soft robotics,…