50 accepted papers
Continuum robots are widely employed in confined environments with narrow passages and spatial constraints. However, achieving general curves with non-constant curvature remains challenging, as existing systems typically rely on multiple flexible segments arranged in series, coupled with complex dri
Continuum robots are widely employed in spatially constrained environments with narrow passages. However, achieving general curves with non-constant curvature remains challenging, as existing systems typically rely on multiple flexible segments arranged in series, coupled with complex drive systems …
Variable stiffness actuators can dynamically adjust output stiffness to accommodate varying task demands, making them well suited for grasping applications. Nevertheless, conventional variable stiffness actuators often suffer from bulky structures, slow response, and complex control, which hinders t
Despite extensive research on tactile sensing, exploiting it to model and interpret the external world remains largely underexplored. We propose a unified framework that leverages vision-based tactile sensors to construct fine-grained object models, enhancing situational understanding. This frame wo
While imitation learning is a powerful paradigm for teaching robots complex manipulation skills, its effectiveness is often bottlenecked by the need for large-scale, human-collected datasets. This paper presents AutoTrialGen, an automated framework designed to generate large and diverse datasets of
Existing works on controlling a concentric tube robot (CTR) mostly focus on the trajectory of its tip position or pose. In order to safely send CTRs in a confined lumen space, we propose to continuously steer the CTRs so that its entire shape will always attempt to approximate target curves over tim…
Gravity compensation has been widely employed in lower limb exoskeletons to reduce leg load and alleviate muscle fatigue. Passive compensation approaches offer inherent safety and lightweight advantages; however, existing designs are often constrained by the bulk and complexity of spring-based mecha
，重力补偿已被广泛应用于下肢 外骨骼用于减轻腿部负荷并缓解肌肉疲劳。被动 补偿方式具有固有的安全性和轻量化 优势;然而，现有设计常常受限于体积 以及基于弹簧的机制复杂性，这会损害 外骨骼的紧凑性和可靠性。为了解决这些问题 局限性，针对 可穿戴的被动双侧下肢外骨骼，具有紧凑型， 设计简单且坚固。基于 合成质心映射方法首先被引入，随后进行扩展 通过微分结构实现双侧配置。综合赛 采用自适应恒定力机制，最终系统 保持结构简洁和空间效率，使其 适合集成空间有限的可穿戴应用。一个 外骨骼原型基于所提出的机制构建， 其性能通过实验进行
The foreign objects on utility poles may damage power lines and cause significant disruptions in electricity supply. A widely used approach to address this issue is for qualified personnel to climb on the pole and remove the foreign objects in a timely manner using an insulating tube. However, prolo
Gravitational loading from a transradial prosthesis imposes continuous mechanical stress on the residual limb, potentially causing discomfort and even prosthesis rejection. This letter presents the Floating Prosthesis, a wearable passive exoskeleton designed for gravity compensation (GC) in transrad
Inspection of hydraulic structures is crucial for ensuring the reliability and safety of infrastructures. Although underwater manipulators are essential tools, existing systems often lack sufficient compliance and safe interaction capabilities. This study develops a novel underwater manipulator syst…
Elasticity is one of the representative parameters that reflect the mechanical properties of soft materials. Detecting the underneath elasticity distribution called elastography is a key step for understanding and interacting with objects. Existing solutions for capturing the interior elasticity dis…
Predicting the kinematics of bending pneumatic muscles (BPMs) remains challenging due to the necessity for models that effectively address the pronounced hysteresis and creep inherent in soft materials. While prior research has predominantly focused on phenomenological and data-driven modeling appro…
In order to provide natural and immersive interactive experience for teleoperation in the context of human-robot collaboration and interaction, this work introduces a natural human-robot interaction system for teleoperation based on ultrasonic haptic feedback. Specifically, our system can accurately
Assist-as-needed (AAN) strategies aim to enhance active participation, thereby promoting neuroplasticity and facilitating motor recovery. However, due to variations in injury severity and motor abilities, non-adaptive AAN control strategies may provide suboptimal assistance. This letter proposes a t
To address the issue that current transformable spoke-wheeled leg-wheel robots cannot simultaneously achieve simple structure, stable locomotion and open step climbing ability, a novel robot design method is proposed. The robot called BiTSpoke is driven by two transformable spoke wheels, with a pass
Modular robotic structures simplify robot design and manufacturing by using standardized modules, enhancing flexibility and adaptability. However, the need for manual input in design and assembly limit their potential. Current methods to automate this process still require significant human effort a
Continuum robots (CRs) possess better compliance than rigid manipulators. However, existing CRs suffer from difficulties in manipulating objects for the conflicting needs of high stiffness and flexibility. This letter proposes an elephant trunk-inspired CR for grasping and moving objects. The CR fea
In the force feedback of physical human-robot interaction, stiffness is rendered to represent the hardness of the manipulated object, aiding users in executing accurate maneuvers. Active feedback based on electric motors usually cannot simultaneously achieve both high force and high backdrivability,
Traditional magnetic tactile sensors are highly susceptible to external magnetic field interference, limiting their reliability in practical applications. To address this challenge, we propose a dual-modal soft magnetic skin capable of simultaneously acquiring magnetic and force tactile information
Vision-based tactile sensors have recently gained prominence due to their superior resolution and ability to capture multi-dimensional contact information. However, even when sensors share the same sensing principle, variations in production factors can lead to differences in the color patterns of t
The cooperation of a pair of robot manipulators is required to manipulate a target object without any fixtures. The conventional control methods coordinate the end-effector pose of each manipulator with that of the other using their kinematics and joint coordinate measurements. Yet, the manipulators
Slow-speed animals can also exhibit remarkable capabilities, as seen in snails that crawl while maintaining adhesion. Snails have inspired researchers to develop traveling wave-based robots and suction robots; however, the combination of traveling wave propulsion with suction ability remains a chall
In order to obtain a good tactile sensing, traditional dexterous hands always enable all the sensing units installed on them all the time, even if just a few sensor units are actually used, which make the tactile sensing system resource-wasting and energy consuming. In order to reduce their complexi
During the inspection and maintenance of the underwater part of hydraulic structures, it is often necessary to clean the surface of a certain area for subsequent operations. At present, there are still few robots capable of underwater fine cleaning. Therefore, this letter introduces the design of a
Predicting the kinematics of bending pneumatic muscles (BPMs) remains challenging due to the necessity for models that effectively address the pronounced hysteresis and creep inherent in soft materials. While prior research has predominantly focused on phenomenological and data-driven modeling appro
Autonomous takeoff of flapping-wing robots (FWRs) is crucial for accelerating response speed and reducing costs in executing tasks. Jumping-aided takeoff is an effective method adopted by birds. However, the limited power density of motors poses challenges in achieving this type of takeoff for FWRs.…
The rapid development of collaborative robotics has provided a new possibility of helping the elderly who has difficulties in daily life, allowing robots to operate according to specific intentions. However, efficient human-robot cooperation requires natural, accurate and reliable intention recognit
This letter focuses on the flexible tube of a bronchoscope robot used in pulmonary intervention surgery, which is considered as a continuum robot. The dynamics model is proposed based on the Koopman operator, leveraging real data to solve for the system matrix parameters accurately. To enhance contr
Point cloud registration is a fundamental task in intelligent robots, aiming to achieve globally consistent geometric structures and providing data support for robotic manipulation. Due to the limited view of measurement devices, it is necessary to collect point clouds from multiple views to constru
Quantifying post-stroke patient motor function is important for assessing rehabilitation progress and optimizing the behavior of adaptive rehabilitation robots. To this end, researchers have increasing turned to the concept of muscle synergies, which encodes the simplified neuromuscular control stra
This paper studies a novel application of an aerial manipulator (AM)-the contact-based landing on a mobile platform. An AM is inherently unstable, under-actuated, and usually loses some DOFs while contacting environments. Meanwhile, the AM's flight state is susceptible to uncertain movements of the…
The challenge of achieving precise control of soft actuators with strong nonlinearity is mainly due to the difficulty of deriving models suitable for model-based control techniques. Fortunately, Koopman operator provides a data-driven method for constructing control-oriented models of nonlinear syst
This letter proposes a novel human-robot co-adaptation framework for robust and accurate user intent recognition, specifically in the context of automatic control in assistance robots such as neural prosthetics and rehabilitation devices empowered by electrophysiological signals. Our goal is to inco
This letter presents a snake robot with a gripper for inspection and maintenance in narrow spaces. The proposed robot has a gripper equipped with a camera and a laser distance sensor that can inspect the surroundings and grasp objects. The control methods of the proposed robot consist of three parts
In recent years, underwater robots have been increasingly used in the maintenance of hydraulic structures. Underwater manipulators are essential devices that are used to carry out such maintenance tasks. For delicate repair operations such as fixing tiny cracks, most existing underwater manipulators
Teleoperated techniques enable remote human-robot interaction and have been widely accepted in robot-assisted surgeries. However, it is still hard to guarantee the safety of teleoperated surgery due to the imperfect input commands limited by remote perception, preventing teleoperated surgery from be…
Robot-assisted eye-hand coordination rehabilitation training system is extremely urgent to study since recent evidence suggests that eye-hand coordination can be brutally disturbed by stroke with critical consequences on motor behavior. In this paper, we develop a robot-assisted eye-hand coordinatio…
Assist-as-needed (AAN) control strategy is applied in robot-aided therapy to promote the subject's engagement with minimal assistance. Current methods are based on physical measurements or employ a model to estimate the subject's engagement, which indirectly reflects the physiology of the subject or
Tissue retraction is an important task in head and neck surgery to leave space for surgical operations. Because the contact between the retractor and soft tissue is not trivial to model, the retraction operation has not been well addressed by robots in modern robot-assisted surgery. We propose a hum
Conventional coverage path planning algorithms are mainly based on the zigzag and spiral patterns or their combinations. The traversal order is limited by the linear or inside-outside manner. We propose a new set of coverage patterns induced from geometric folding operations, called the geometric fo…
This paper proposes a new path planning strategy - the Rapid Visible Tree (RVT) algorithm to guide a robot to its goal in a complex environment without dangerous collisions. By fusing the visibility information with the classic tree-based searching method, RVT only takes the noisy points locally acq…
Most of the current power line inspection robots use cameras and LiDARs to inspect the power line surfaces and the surrounding environment. But it is still difficult to detect the internal defects of the power lines. In this letter, the design and implementation of LineSpyX, a novel power line inspe
In this paper an automated data labeling (ADL) neural network is proposed to streamline dataset collecting for real-time predicting the continuous motion of hand and wrist, these gestures are only decoded from a surface electromyography (sEMG) array of eight channels. Unlike collecting both the bio-…
Successful sampling on the surface of asteroids is difficult because of their weightless environment and unknown material mechanical property. This work presents an asteroid sampler based on sweeping and grinding methods to improve the success rate of sampling. The sampler uses two brushes rotating…
This paper developed a 4-degree-of-freedom cable-driven upper limb rehabilitation robot and proposed a control algorithm of the passive training for this robot. Comparing with the conventional cable-driven rehabilitation robot, the workspace of this robot is increased by optimizing the distribution…
The brain-machine interface (BMI) has been reported to offer the potential for controlling the assistive robot for the motor impaired people, using the non-invasively obtained electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. However, the EEG based BMI may not be sufficient and stable to drive the robot moving fr…
This paper presents a deployable boom which combines a rigid telescopic frame and a flexible tape spring. The front end of the spring is fixed on the rear end of the innermost segment of the frame. The spring spreads and rolls up inside the frame to drive the segments to move one by one to realize t…