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Rigid-bodied robots often lack compliance needed to adapt to unstructured environments, while fully soft robots, though highly adaptable, struggle with scalability and load capacity. In nature, musculoskeletal systems balance strength and…
Studies of human-robot interaction in dynamic and unstructured environments show that as more advanced robotic capabilities are deployed, the need for cooperative competencies to support collaboration with human problem-holders increases.…
Co-designing autonomous robotic agents involves simultaneously optimizing the controller and physical design of the agent. Its inherent bi-level optimization formulation necessitates an outer loop design optimization driven by an inner loop…
Soft robotics has emerged as the standard solution for grasping deformable objects, and has proven invaluable for mobile robotic exploration in extreme environments. However, despite this growth, there are no widely adopted computational…
Several earlier studies have shown impressive control performance in complex robotic systems by designing the controller using a neural network and training it with model-free reinforcement learning. However, these outstanding controllers…
The collective operation of robots, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operating as a team or swarm, is affected by their individual capabilities, which in turn is dependent on their physical design, aka morphology. However, with the…
The uncertainties in material and other properties of structures are usually spatially correlated. We introduce an efficient technique for representing and processing spatially correlated random fields in robust topology optimisation of…
As a core part of autonomous driving systems, motion planning has received extensive attention from academia and industry. However, real-time trajectory planning capable of spatial-temporal joint optimization is challenged by nonholonomic…
Floating-base multi-link robots can change their shape during flight, making them well-suited for applications in confined environments such as autonomous inspection and search and rescue. However, trajectory planning for such systems…
Both the design and control of a robot play equally important roles in its task performance. However, while optimal control is well studied in the machine learning and robotics community, less attention is placed on finding the optimal…
Parallel-elastic joints can improve the efficiency and strength of robots by assisting the actuators with additional torques. For these benefits to be realized, a spring needs to be carefully designed. However, designing robots is an…
In many human-in-the-loop robotic applications such as robot-assisted surgery and remote teleoperation, predicting the intended motion of the human operator may be useful for successful implementation of shared control, guidance virtual…
As robots become more adaptable, responsive, and capable of interacting with humans, the design of effective human-robot collaboration becomes critical. Yet, this design process is typically led by monodisciplinary approaches, often…
Empirical experiences have shown that simultaneous (rather than conventional sequential) plant and controller design procedure leads to an improvement in performance and saving of plant resources. Such a simultaneous synthesis procedure is…
Mechanical metamaterials have continued to offer unprecedented tunability in mechanical properties, but most designs to date have prioritized attaining high stiffness and strength while sacrificing deformability. The emergence of woven…
Recent advancements in soft actuators have enabled soft continuum swimming robots to achieve higher efficiency and more closely mimic the behaviors of real marine animals. However, optimizing the design and control of these soft continuum…
The shift from a linear to a circular economy has the potential to simultaneously reduce uncertainties of material supplies and waste generation. However, to date, the development of robotic and, more generally, autonomous systems have been…
Many current robot designs prioritize efficiency and one-size-fits-all solutions, oftentimes overlooking personalization, adaptability, and sustainability. To explore alternatives, we conducted two co-design workshops with 23 participants,…
Rapid robotic system development sets a demand for multi-disciplinary methods and tools to explore and compare design alternatives. In this paper, we present collaborative modeling that combines discrete-event models of controller software…
The design of intelligent materials often draws parallels with the complex adaptive behaviors of biological organisms, where robust functionality stems from sophisticated hierarchical organization and emergent long-distance coordination…