Related papers: A Compact Peristaltic Pump Based on Magneto-Elasti…
This paper presents a computational approach for finding the optimal shapes of peristaltic pumps transporting rigid particles in Stokes flow. In particular, we consider shapes that minimize the rate of energy dissipation while pumping a…
Micro-organisms propel themselves in viscous environments by the periodic, nonreciprocal beating of slender appendages known as flagella. Active materials have been widely exploited to mimic this form of locomotion. However, the realization…
Grip, walk, crawl, and jump. Soft robots are integrated functional structures composed of compliant mechanisms, whose activity spans various industrial applications such as surgery, healthcare, surveillance, and even planetary exploration.…
This paper presents the work devoted to the study of the operation of a miniaturized membrane Stirling engine. Indeed, such an engine relies on the dynamic coupling of the motion of two membranes to achieve a prime mover Stirling…
Soft robotics is an attractive and rapidly emerging field, in which actuation is coupled with the elastic response of the robot's structure to achieve complex deformation patterns. A crucial challenge is the need for multiple control…
This paper presents results about fabrication and operation of electrostatic actuators in liquids with various permittivities. In the static mode, we provide experimental and theoretical demonstration that the pull-in effect can be shifted…
This paper presents a novel soft robotic system for a deformable mannequin that can be employed to physically realize the 3D geometry of different human bodies. The soft membrane on a mannequin is deformed by inflating several curved…
Mechanically characterizing the human-machine interface is essential to understanding user behavior and optimizing wearable robot performance. This interface has been challenging to sensorize due to manufacturing complexity and non-linear…
Fluid-based soft actuators are an attractive option for lightweight and human-safe robots. These actuators, combined with fluid pressure force feedback, are in principle a form of series-elastic actuation (SEA), in which nearly all…
Microfluidic devices manufactured from soft polymeric materials have emerged as a paradigm for cheap, disposable and easy-to-prototype fluidic platforms for integrating chemical and biological assays and analyses. The interplay between the…
Characterizing the softness of deformable materials having partial elastic and partial viscous behaviour via soft lubrication experiments has emerged as a versatile and robust methodology in recent times. However, a straightforward…
We consider some basic principles of fluid-induced lubrication at soft interfaces. In particular, we show how the presence of a soft substrate leads to an increase in the physical separation between surfaces sliding past each other. By…
Elastic membranes composed of paramagnetic beads offer the possibility of assembling versatile actuators operated autonomously by external magnetic fields. Here we develop a theoretical framework to study shapes of such paramagnetic…
Soft robotics is a field of robotic system design characterized by materials and structures that exhibit large-scale deformation, high compliance, and rich multifunctionality. The incorporation of soft and deformable structures endows soft…
Dynamic wetting plays an important role in the physics of multiphase flow, and has significant influence on many industrial and geotechnical applications. In this work, a modified smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) model is employed to…
We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…
We show both numerically and analytically that a chemically patterned active pore can act as a micro/nano-pump for fluids, even if it is fore-aft symmetric. This is possible due to a spontaneous symmetry breaking which occurs when advection…
We present the modeling, design, fabrication and feedback control of an earthworm-inspired soft robot capable of crawling on surfaces by actively manipulating the frictional force between its body and the surface. Earthworms are segmented…
We study numerically how multiple deformable capsules squeeze into a constriction. This situation is largely encountered in microfluidic chips designed to manipulate living cells, which are soft entities. We use fully three-dimensional…
We present a scattering theory of the electromotive force and internal resistance of an electron pump. The characterization of the device performance in terms of only two parameters requires the assumption of incoherent multiple scattering…