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This paper proposes a new type of actuator at millimeter scale, which is based on Simplified Electro-Permanent (SEP) magnets. The new actuator can achieve connection and smooth motion by controlling the polarity of SEP magnets. Analyses…
Soft robots are promising for manipulation tasks thanks to their compliance, safety, and high degree of freedom. However, the commonly used bidirectional continuum segment design means soft robotic manipulators only function in a limited…
A robotic platform for mobile manipulation needs to satisfy two contradicting requirements for many real-world applications: A compact base is required to navigate through cluttered indoor environments, while the support needs to be large…
This study proposes a novel robotic hand that can achieve self-adaptive grasping and a large payload (over 20 kg) with a single actuator. Accordingly, two novel mechanisms, an actuation system with self-motion switching and a self-adaptive…
Movement disorders impact muscle strength and mobility, and despite therapeutic efforts, many people with movement disorders have challenges functioning independently. Soft wearable robots, or exosuits, offer a promising solution for…
The properties and applications of auxetics have been widely explored in the past years. Through proper utilization of auxetic structures, designs with unprecedented mechanical and structural behaviors can be produced. Taking advantage of…
We propose a novel tri-fingered soft robotic gripper with decoupled stiffness and shape control capability for performing adaptive grasping with minimum system complexity. The proposed soft fingers adaptively conform to object shapes…
We introduce and analyze a model for self-reconfigurable robots made up of unit-cube modules. Compared to past models, our model aims to newly capture two important practical aspects of real-world robots. First, modules often do not occupy…
Robots using cellular-like redundant binary actuators could outmatch electric-gearmotor robotic systems in terms of reliability, force-to-weight ratio and cost. This paper presents a robust fault tolerant control scheme that is designed to…
Complex motions for robots are frequently generated by switching among a collection of individual movement primitives. We use this approach to formulate robot motion plans as sequences of primitives to be executed one after the other. When…
This paper explores the concept of reflexive actuation, examining how robots may leverage both internal and external stimuli to trigger changes in the motion, performance, or physical characteristics of the robot, such as its size, shape,…
Soft robots - due to their intrinsic flexibility of the body - can adaptively navigate unstructured environments. One of the most popular locomotion gaits that has been implemented in soft robots is undulation. The undulation motion in soft…
Shape-programmable soft materials that exhibit integrated multifunctional shape manipulations, including reprogrammable, untethered, fast, and reversible shape transformation and locking, are highly desirable for a plethora of applications,…
Magnetic elastomers deform under a magnetic field, working as a soft actuator. Untethered microbot made of magnetic elastomers have great potentials in performing medical tasks inside human body as mini doctors. However, the lack of a…
Active polymers are driven out of equilibrium by internal forces and exhibit conformational properties that differ fundamentally from those of passive chains. Here we study how spatially modulated tangential activity reshapes the…
Model-based control usually relies on an accurate model, which is often obtained from CAD and actuator models. The more accurate the model the better the control performance. However, in bipedal robots that demonstrate high agility actions,…
Collections of simple, self-propelled colloidal particles exhibit complex, emergent dynamical behavior, with promising applications in microrobotics. When confined within a deformable vesicle, self-propelled rods cluster and align,…
Traditional aerial vehicles are usually custom-designed for specific tasks. Although they offer an efficient solution, they are not always able to adapt to changes in the task specification, e.g., increasing the payload. This applies to…
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…
Soft robots present unique capabilities, but have been limited by the lack of scalable technologies for construction and the complexity of algorithms for efficient control and motion, which depend on soft-body dynamics, high-dimensional…