19 accepted papers
As one of the effective closed-loop control methods, visual servoing control methods are widely applied to continuum robots. However, existing visual servoing control methods mostly focus on accurate control of the robot’s end-effector, with less consideration given to the robot’s shape. In this wor
For objects with complex topological and geometrical features, stochastic topological grasping can be executed without the necessity for feedback or precise planning. However, this grasping method has two significant limitations. First, the technique's effectiveness is reduced when interacting with
Observing that the key for robotic action planning is to understand the target-object motion when its associated part is manipulated by the end effector, we propose to generate the 3D object-part scene flow and extract its transformations to solve the action trajectories for diverse embodiments. The
The good compliance of soft robots provides a reliable safety environment for human-robot interaction; however, it also creates challenges for adding sensors to soft robots. In this letter, we propose a self-sensing origami-inspired soft twisting actuator. The actuator is designed based on the struc
Recently, fiber optic sensors such as fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) have been widely investigated for shape reconstruction and force estimation of flexible surgical robots. However, most existing approaches need precise model parameters of FBGs inside the fiber and their alignments with the flexible r…
Object pose estimation plays a crucial role in robotic manipulation, however, its practical applicability still suffers from limited generalizability. This paper addresses the challenge of generalizable object pose estimation, particularly focusing on category-level object pose estimation for unseen…
Recent advancements toward perception and decision-making of flexible endoscopes have shown great potential in computer-aided surgical interventions. However, owing to modeling uncertainty and inter-patient anatomical variation in flexible endoscopy, the challenge remains for efficient and safe navi…
This paper proposes a novel bin picking framework, two-stage grasping, aiming at precise grasping of cluttered small objects. Object density estimation and rough grasping are conducted in the first stage. Fine segmentation, detection, grasping, and pushing are performed in the second stage. A small…
Robots have been used extensively in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic since its outbreak. One prominent direction is the use of robots for swab sampling, which not only solves the shortage of medical staffs, but also prevents them from being infected during face-to-face sampling. However, a
In this paper, we propose a novel variable-length estimation approach for shape sensing of extensible soft robots utilizing fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). Shape reconstruction from FBG sensors has been increasingly developed for soft robots, while the narrow stretching range of FBG fiber makes it diff…
Fluidic and tendon driven actuators are widely applied in soft robotic hand design. Fluidic actuated soft robotic hands are highly compliant and can adapt to various objects. Tendon driven soft robotic hands are easier to control and have high dexterity and large force output, however, they are less
Autonomous grasping is an important factor for robots physically interacting with the environment and executing versatile tasks. However, a universally applicable, cost-effective, and rapidly deployable autonomous grasping approach is still limited by those target objects with fuzzy-depth informatio…
Robotic hands with anthropomorphism considerations are of prominent popularity in human-centered environment. Existing anthropomorphic robotic hands achieving part or most of human hand comparable dexterity have been applied as various robotic end-effectors and prosthetics. However, two deficiencies…
Soft robot is known for great safety in human-centered environments due to its inherent compliance. However, the compliance resulting from the soft continuum structure and viscoelastic material also induces challenges for sensing and control of soft robots. In this letter, we propose a proprioceptiv
Soft robotic arms are receiving more and more attention for their intrinsic safety and natural compliance. Instead of traditional serialized rotary joints, soft robotic arms often have complex joints with coupled degrees of freedom like bending, rotation, and elongation, enabling them with more free
This letter presents a dexterous soft robotic hand, BCL-13, with 4 fingers and 13 independently actuated joints capable of in-hand manipulation. The iconic dexterity is enabled by a novel soft robotic finger design with three degrees of freedom (DOFs), significantly improving over existing soft actu
Impact safety and response are critical challenges for robots working under dynamic environments and with close proximity to humans. State-of-the-art rigid robots and soft robots both have limitations and tradeoffs due to their characteristics. In this letter, we introduced a hybrid-antagonistic-pne
A novel soft-robotic gripper design is presented, with three soft bending fingers and one passively adaptive palm. Each soft finger comprises two ellipse-profiled pneumatic chambers. Combined with the adaptive palm and the surface patterned feature, the soft gripper could achieve 40-N grasping force
Soft robots are inherently compliant and adaptive, therefore they are promising candidates for interacting with humans. However robotic manipulators utilizing soft actuators are often constrained by a series of actuator performance limitations. In this work we design a novel linear soft robotic actu…