15 accepted papers
Perching has recently emerged as a key capability in aerial robotics, enabling substantial gains in energy efficiency and operational endurance for long-duration missions. In this work, we present a multifunctional perching mechanism capable of both branch and surface perching. For branch perching,
Perching onto objects can allow flying robots to stay at a desired height at low or no cost of energy. This paper presents a novel passive mechanism for aerial perching onto smooth surfaces. This mechanism is made from a bistable mechanism and a soft suction cup. Different from existing designs, it…
Grasping and manipulating objects is an integral part of many robotic systems. Both soft and rigid grippers have been investigated for manipulating objects in a multitude of different roles. Rigid grippers can hold heavy objects and apply large amounts of force, while soft grippers can conform to th…
Traditional soft robots require separate sensors and actuators to precisely control their motion. A twisted-and-coiled actuator (TCA) is a new artificial muscle with both actuation and self-sensing capability that can simultaneously serve both as a sensor and an actuator allowing to control the moti…
Soft robots demonstrate great potential compared with traditional rigid robots owing to their inherently soft body structures. Although researchers have made tremendous progress in recent years, existing soft robots are in general plagued by a main issue: slow speeds and small forces. In this work,…
In nature, animals or insects can leverage the same body parts for different functions (e.g., a frog can use its legs to walk, jump, and swim). But robots, especially miniature ones, can normally perform a single task with a fixed mechanical design. In this letter, we propose a novel strategy to ena
Small aerial robots usually face a common challenge: they can only fly for a short time due to their limited onboard energy supply. To tackle this issue, one promising solution is to endow flying robots with perching capability so that they can perch or land on walls, trees, or power lines to rest o…
Shape morphing, meaning a structure can first morph and then lock into another shape, can be applied to robot designs to endow robots with adaptive morphology for increased functionality and adaptivity. In this paper, we introduce a novel shape morphing scheme enabled by a new artificial muscle: twi
Shape morphing, meaning a structure can first morph and then lock into another shape, can be applied to robot designs to endow robots with adaptive morphology for increased functionality and adaptivity. In this paper, we introduce a novel shape morphing scheme enabled by a new artificial muscle: twi…
Many small insects such as water striders can leap from water surface. Inspired by their jumping capability, we present the design of a novel, miniature, water surface jumping robot in this paper. Jumping from water surface is more challenging than jumping from ground due to the liquid water surface
This paper presents the static and dynamic modeling for a recently discovered artificial muscle-twisted and coiled actuator (TCA). This actuator can generate large force and displacement; moreover, it is low-cost, easy to fabricate, and customizable. Since the discovery of TCA, it has been widely ad…
Biologists proposed the tau theory to explain how animals control their motion using visual feedback for different tasks including landing and perching. Tau theory is based on a concept called time-to-contact, which is the required time to contact an object if the current velocity is maintained. Rec…
This article develops a set space visual servoing method that is quiet different from state-of-the-art approaches. Our approach does not require complex image processing techniques for the extraction, matching and tracking of image features. Instead, it only requires a simple matching algorithm and…
Soft robots with inherent compliance have been recently investigated intensively for locomotion or manipulations. A critical problem for soft robots is the capability to estimate their shapes to enable closed-loop control for precise motion. In this paper, we propose a new low-cost sensor that can b…
Small insects can use vision to successfully land on arbitrary surfaces. For miniature robots with a size of a few centimeters, it is challenging to achieve similar capabilities due to their small sizes. To address this problem, we present a new vision based landing algorithm using a non-vector spac…