43 accepted papers
Soft robots,compared to rigid robots,possess inherent advantages,including higher degrees of freedom, compliance,and enhanced safety,which have contributed to their increasing application across various fields. Among these benefits, adaptability is particularly noteworthy. In this paper, adaptabilit…
Modular soft robot arms (MSRAs) are composed of multiple modules connected in a sequence, and they can bend at different angles in various directions. This capability allows MSRAs to perform more intricate tasks than single-module robots. However, the modular structure also induces challenges in acc…
Robots benefit from sensory information to coordinate body movement, gain robustness against perturbations, and transit between different modes to adapt to various terrains. However, few amphibious robots can sense interactions with both terrestrial and aquatic environments. In this paper, we presen…
Mimicking the graceful motion of swimming animals remains a core challenge in soft robotics due to the complexity of fluid-structure interaction and the difficulty of controlling soft, biomimetic bodies. Existing modeling approaches are often computationally expensive and impractical for complex con…
Locomotion robots with active or passive compliance can show robustness to uncertain scenarios, which can be promising for agricultural, research and environmental industries. However, state estimation for these robots is challenging due to the lack of rigid-body assumptions and kinematic changes fr…
Soft continuum robots possess inherent compliance and ensure safe interactions. Whilst advantageous, their high degrees of freedom pose significant challenges for estimating the robot's configuration and sensing external contacts. Existing analytical methods rely on finite state-representations that
CAFEs (Collaborative Agricultural Floating Endeffectors) is a new robot design and control approach to automating large-scale agricultural tasks. Based upon a cable driven robot architecture, by sharing the same roller-driven cable set with modular robotic arms, a fast-switching clamping mechanism a
Maneuverability in soft bio-inspired underwater robots, particularly for following complex trajectories, remains an unsolved challenge. In this work, we present a control approach based on a PD controller integrated with real-time camera feedback, enabling continuous and reliable free-swimming contr
To exploit the compliant capabilities of soft robot arms we require controller which can exploit their physical capabilities. Teleoperation, leveraging a human in the loop, is a key step towards achieving more complex control strategies. Whilst teleoperation is widely used for rigid robots, for soft
This study presents an innovative offset-trimmed helicoids (OTH) structure, featuring a tunable deformation center that emulates the flexibility of human fingers. This design significantly reduces the actuation force needed for larger elastic deformations, particularly when dealing with harder mater
The design of wings is crucial for tailless Flapping-wing robots (FWRs), as these robots rely exclusively on their wings for lift generation and body control. However, the current methodology for wing design primarily depends on the experience and heuristics of engineers. This study aims to explore
Insects and hummingbirds exhibit remarkable agility, including full body flip maneuvers. Achieving similar maneuvers of bio-inspired tailless flapping-wing robots (FWRs) is challenging due to the complex dynamics, inherent nonlinearities and control issues. This paper presents an nonlinear model pre
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
Teleoperated robotic manipulators enable the collection of demonstration data, which can be used to train control policies through imitation learning. However, such methods can require significant amounts of training data to develop robust policies or adapt them to new and unseen tasks. While expert
Proprioceptive sensing plays a crucial role in robotics, enabling closed-loop control approaches that are essential for autonomous applications. In Soft Robotics, the development and integration of sensors is even more challenging due to the compliant nature of soft bodies. Moreover, underwater envi
Soft optical sensors are an exciting sensing technology for capturing the deformation of soft structures as they can easily fabricated and integrated. However, one key challenge is their scalability, as each fiber requires a sensor, and to achieve large area, or multi-fiber sensing requires many opt
We show how a variety of techniques from Computer Graphics can be leveraged to intuitively control the shape (configuration) of arbitrary 3D Soft Robots in VR. Our pipeline, Virtual Reality Soft Robot Inverse Kinematics (VR-Soft IK), overcomes fundamental limitations of general-purpose drag-and-drop…
Soft robotic grippers are intrinsically delicate while grasping objects, and can rely on mechanical deformation to adapt to different shapes without explicit control. These characteristics are particularly appealing for agriculture, where items of produce from the same crop can vary significantly in…
Soft continuum manipulators are celebrated for their versatility and physical robustness to external forces and perturbations. However, this feature comes at a cost. The many degrees of freedom and compliance pose challenges for accurate pose reconstruction, both in terms of distributed sensing and…
Learning manipulation from demonstration is a key way for humans to teach complex tasks. However, this domain mainly focuses on kinetic teaching, and does not consider imitation of interaction forces which is essential for more contact rich tasks. We propose a framework that enables robotic imitatio…
This study explores the potential of automating robotic laboratory readiness assessment by integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) with robotic data acquisition. It investigates the capability of LLMs to detect equipment motion and operational status using visual and auditory information. Despite t…
The control possibilities for soft robots have long been hindered by the need for reliable methods to estimate their configuration. Inertial measurement units (IMUs) can solve this challenge, but they are affected by well-known drift issues. This letter proposes a method to eliminate this limitation
For many manipulation tasks in environments such as laboratory or a kitchen, the presence of two robot arms is important to enable collaborative tasks requiring two arms (e.g. lid removal or tool use) or to improve the efficiency of scheduling of tasks. Currently, the development of multi-arm manipu…
Fully exploiting soft robots' capabilities requires devising strategies that can accurately control their movements with the limited amount of control sources available. This task is challenging for reasons including the hard-to-model dynamics, the system's underactuation, and the need of using a pr
Soft robotics requires effective tools to educate the next generation of engineers and researchers. Stemming from a lack of universally accepted principles for education and with high barriers to entry in terms of fabrication and hardware, education to date has been highly ad hoc. We present a low-c…
Aquatic creatures exhibit remarkable adaptations of their body to efficiently interact with the surrounding fluid. The tight coupling between their morphology, motion, and the environment are highly complex but serves as a valuable example when creating biomimetic structures in soft robotic swimmers
The use of aerial vehicles for exploration and data collection has the potential to significantly aid environmental monitoring in environments which are dangerous and hard to navigate. However, within these environments navigation can often be restricted by overhangs which are challenging to navigat…
Laboratory experiments in modern food labs are human-driven and tedious processes which can have limited throughput, reliability, repeatability or robustness. Through repeatable motions and precise control of process parameters, robotic automation can provide significant improvements to the existing…
Advances in soft sensors coupled with machine learning are enabling increasingly capable wearable systems. Since hand motion in particular can convey useful information for developing intuitive interfaces, glove-based systems can have a significant impact on many application areas. A key remaining c
The control possibilities for soft robots have long been hindered by the lack of accurate yet computationally treatable dynamic models of soft structures. Polynomial curvature models propose a solution to this quest for continuum slender structures. Nevertheless, the results produced with this class
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have broad applications including disaster response, transportation, photography, and mapping. A significant bottleneck in the development of UAVs is the limited availability of automatic tools for task-specific co-design of a UAV's shape and controller. The developme…
Humans have an incredible sense of self-preservation that is both instilled, and also learned through experience. One system which contributes to this is the pain and reflex system which both minimizes damage through involuntary reflex actions and also serves as a means of 'negative reinforcement’ t…
Soft robots can be incredibly robust and safe but typically fail to match the strength and precision of rigid robots. This dichotomy between soft and rigid is recently starting to break down, with emerging research interest in hybrid soft-rigid robots. In this work, we draw inspiration from Nature,…
The ability to 3D print soft materials with integrated strain sensors enables significant flexibility for the design and fabrication of soft robots. Hydrogels provide an interesting alternative to traditional soft robot materials, allowing for more varied fabrication techniques. In this work, we inv
The sense of taste is fundamental to a human chef’s ability to cook tasty food. To develop robots that can demonstrate human-like cooking, robots need to be equipped with a sense of taste and enabled to use this perception capability to improve or understand the food which they are cooking. We propo…
Underwater soft robots are challenging to model and control because of their high degrees of freedom and their intricate coupling with water. In this letter, we present a method that leverages the recent development in differentiable simulation coupled with a differentiable, analytical hydrodynamic
Soft robotic sensors have been limited in their applications due to their highly nonlinear time variant behavior. Current studies are either looking into techniques to improve the mechano-electrical properties of these sensors or into modelling algorithms that account for the history of each sensor.
With advances in the field of robotic manipulation, sensing and machine learning, robotic chefs are expected to become prevalent in our kitchens and restaurants. Robotic chefs are envisioned to replicate human skills in order to reduce the burden of the cooking process. However, the potential of rob
The goal of achieving `universal grasping' where many objects can be handled with minimal control input is the focus of much research due to potential high impact applications ranging from grocery packing to recycling. However, many of the grippers developed suffer from limited sensing capabilities…
Continuum body structures provide unique opportunities for soft robotics, with the infinite degrees of freedom enabling unconstrained and highly adaptive exploration and manipulation. However, the infinite degrees of freedom of continuum bodies makes sensing (both intrinsically and extrinsically) ch
Prefabrication of structures is currently used in a limited capacity, due to the lack of flexibility, despite the potential cost and speed advantages. Autonomous flexible reassembly enables structures to be developed which can be continuously and iteratively dis-assembled and re-assembled providing…
Robotic technologies are being increasingly applied to agriculture, in particular to harvesting. Some types of produce such as iceberg lettuce require additional processing after harvesting in order to satisfy the needs of the end-user or customer. Lettuce must have its outer leaves removed, a task
There is an increasing interest in the use of soft technologies for robotic application, however, the lack of advanced sensory motor capabilities is currently a significant limitation. Sensing of soft robots, in particular, is still not fully understood and methods by which a large deformable contin…