24 accepted papers
Soft robotics offers the opportunity to create dexterous machines that can safely handle delicate objects. Grippers made from deformable actuators and compliant materials can deform around the objects with which they come in contact. The continuum mechanics of flexible manipulators can be leveraged …
Matching the swimming efficiency and agility of fish has remained an elusive goal in underwater robotics. Such locomotion capabilities rely on complex vortex interactions between the robot’s body and the surrounding fluid. However, simulating these dynamics, which are governed by coupled ordinary an…
Soft robotics offers the opportunity to create dexterous machines that can safely handle delicate objects. Grippers made from deformable actuators and compliant materials can deform around the objects with which they come in contact. The continuum mechanics of flexible manipulators can be leveraged
Ensuring safety via safety filters in real-world robotics presents significant challenges, particularly when the system dynamics is complex or unavailable. To handle this issue, learning-based safety filters recently gained popularity, which can be classified as model-based and model-free methods. E
Reasoning from sequences of raw sensory data is a ubiquitous problem across fields ranging from medical devices to robotics. These problems often involve using long sequences of raw sensor data (e.g. magnetometers, piezoresistors) to predict sequences of desirable physical quantities (e.g. force, in…
High cost and lack of reliability have precluded the widespread adoption of dexterous hands in robotics. Furthermore, the lack of a viable tactile sensor capable of sensing over the entire area of the hand impedes the rich, low-level feedback that would improve the learning of dexterous manipulation
Mobile manipulators in the home can provide increased autonomy to individuals with severe motor impairments, who often cannot complete activities of daily living (ADLs) without the help of a caregiver. Teleoperation of an assistive mobile manipulator could enable an individual with motor impairments…
Recent work on battery-free soft robotics has demonstrated the use of liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) to build shape-changing materials activated by applied external heat. However, sources of heat must typically be in direct field-of-view of the robot (i.e. NIR, laser, and visual light EM sources or…
Having accurate localization capabilities is one of the fundamental requirements of autonomous robots. For underwater vehicles, the choices for effective localization are limited due to limitations of GPS use in water and poor environ-mental visibility that makes camera-based methods ineffective. Po…
Control of soft robotic manipulators remains a challenge for designs with advanced capabilities and novel actuation. Two significant limitations are multi-axis, three-dimensional motion of soft bodies alongside actuator dynamics and constraints, both of which are present in shape-memory-alloy (SMA)-
Traditionally, robotic grippers are based on stiff materials, enabling end effectors with high load capacity and precision for industrial applications. Recent advances in soft robotics have led to a proliferation of novel gripper designs with increased conformability to accommodate objects of varyin
Simulating the swimming of soft underwater robot remains challenging due to the absence of an efficient numerical framework that can effectively capture the geometrically nonlinear deformation of soft materials and structures when interacting with a liquid environment. Here, we address this by intro…
Soft sensors have continued growing interest in robotics, due to their ability to enable both passive conformal contact from the material properties and active contact data from the sensor properties. However, the same properties of conformal contact result in faster deterioration of soft sensors an…
This paper presents a radio-frequency (RF) based assistive technology for voice impairments (i.e., dysphonia), which occurs in an estimated 1% of the global population. We specifically focus on acquired voice disorders where users continue to be able to make facial and lip gestures associated with s…
Soft robots are capable of inherently safer interactions with their environment than rigid robots since they can mechanically deform in response to unanticipated stimuli. However, their complex mechanics can make planning and control difficult, particularly with tasks such as locomotion. In this wor…
Tactile sensors are used in robot manipulation to reduce uncertainty regarding hand-object pose estimation. However, existing sensor technologies tend to be bulky and provide signals that are difficult to interpret into actionable changes. Here, we achieve wireless tactile sensing with soft and conf…
Soft tactile skins can provide an in-depth understanding of contact location and force through a soft and deformable interface. However, widespread implementation of soft robotic sensing skins remains limited due to non-scalable fabrication techniques, lack of customization, and complex integration
Electronic skins and tactile sensors can provide the sense of touch to robotic manipulators. These sensing modalities complement existing long range optical sensors and can provide detailed information before and after contact. However, integration with existing systems can be challenging due to siz…
Tactile sensors have been increasingly used to support rigid robot grippers in object grasping and manipulation. However, rigid grippers are often limited in their ability to handle compliant, delicate, or irregularly shaped objects. In recent years, grippers made from soft and flexible materials ha…
Like their natural mammalian and reptilian counterparts, legged soft robots require robust walking dynamics and untethered functionality in order to swiftly maneuver through unstructured environments. Progress in this domain requires careful selection of soft limb actuators and integration of power
Movement in echinoderms is facilitated by the coordinated activity of thousands of individually addressable and reversibly adhesive tube feet. To investigate the potential applicability of these unique biological actuators as a locomotory structure for robotics applications, we describe here the des
Progress in soft robotics depends on the integration of electronics for sensing, power regulation, and signal processing. Commercially available microelectronics satisfy these functions and are small enough to preserve the natural mechanics of the host system. Here, we present a method for incorpora…
Efforts in soft-matter sensing with liquid metal (LM) have largely focused on pressure, strain, and bend sensing by measuring changes in capacitance or resistance of LM circuits embedded in a soft elastomer. Here, we show that LM electronics can be used to combine pressure sensing with proximity det…
Clutches can be used to enhance the functionality of springs or actuators in robotic devices. Here we describe a lightweight, low-power clutch used to control spring engagement in an ankle exoskeleton. The clutch is based on electrostatic adhesion between thin electrode sheets coated with a dielectr