Related papers: EvoGymCM: Harnessing Continuous Material Stiffness…
The joint optimization of physical parameters and controllers in robotic systems is challenging. This is due to the difficulties of predicting the effect that changes in physical parameters have on final performances. At the same time,…
Harnessing the rich nonlinear dynamics of highly-deformable materials has the potential to unlock the next generation of functional smart materials and devices. However, unlocking such potential requires effective strategies to spatially…
Passive elastic elements can contribute to stability, energetic efficiency, and impact absorption in both biological and robotic systems. They also add dynamical complexity which makes them more challenging to model and control. The impact…
Manipulating deformable and fragile objects remains a fundamental challenge in robotics due to complex contact dynamics and strict requirements on object integrity. Existing approaches typically optimize either end-effector design or…
Digital stiffness programmability is fulfilled with a heterogeneous mechanical metamaterial. The prototype consists of an elastomer matrix containing tessellations of diamond shaped cavities selectively confined with semi-rigid plastic beam…
Fabric has been a fundamental part of human life for thousands of years, providing comfort, protection, and aesthetic expression. While modern advancements have enhanced fabric's functionality, it remains static and unchangeable, failing to…
With increasing demand for mass customization, traditional manufacturing robots that rely on rule-based operations lack the flexibility to accommodate customized or new product variants. Human-Robot Collaboration has demonstrated potential…
Soft robots are notoriously hard to control. This is partly due to the scarcity of models able to capture their complex continuum mechanics, resulting in a lack of control methodologies that take full advantage of body compliance. Currently…
Animals can finely modulate their leg stiffness to interact with complex terrains and absorb sudden shocks. In feats like leaping and sprinting, animals demonstrate a sophisticated interplay of opposing muscle pairs that actively modulate…
Soft robots have proven to outperform traditional robots in applications related to propagation in geometrically constrained environments. Designing these robots and their controllers is an intricate task, since their building materials…
A new approach for generating stress-constrained topological designs in continua is presented. The main novelty is in the use of elasto-plastic modeling and in optimizing the design such that it will exhibit a linear-elastic response. This…
Different subsystems of organisms adapt over many time scales, such as rapid changes in the nervous system (learning), slower morphological and neurological change over the lifetime of the organism (postnatal development), and change over…
Additive manufacturing methods together with topology optimization have enabled the creation of multiscale structures with controlled spatially-varying material microstructure. However, topology optimization or inverse design of such…
Collaborative robots must simultaneously be safe enough to operate in close proximity to human operators and powerful enough to assist users in industrial tasks such as lifting heavy equipment. The requirement for safety necessitates that…
The Finite Element Method (FEM) is a powerful modeling tool for predicting soft robots' behavior, but its computation time can limit practical applications. In this paper, a learning-based approach based on condensation of the FEM model is…
Purpose of Review: This review provides an overview of the state of the art in bioinspired soft robotics with by examining advancements in actuation, functionality, modeling, and control. Recent Findings: Recent research into actuation…
Soft composite solids are made of inclusions dispersed within soft matrices. They are ubiquitous in nature and form the basis of many biological tissues. In the field of materials science, synthetic soft composites are promising candidates…
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…
Soft robotics has advanced rapidly, yet its control methods remain fragmented: different morphologies and actuation schemes still require task-specific controllers, hindering theoretical integration and large-scale deployment. A generic…
We introduce controlgym, a library of thirty-six industrial control settings, and ten infinite-dimensional partial differential equation (PDE)-based control problems. Integrated within the OpenAI Gym/Gymnasium (Gym) framework, controlgym…