8 accepted papers
We present an inflatable finger pad that allows regular parallel-jaw grippers to vary their grasp stiffness while maintaining a contact force and contact to non-planar surfaces. An eversible radial bellows structure made of silicone rubber allows the pad to extend to four times its original height a…
Between humans, body motion is an intuitive and ubiquitous means to coordinate interactions, but so far collaborative robots have not embraced this mode of communication. One reason for this is that conventional behavior generation systems use finite state machines which make it exceptionally diffic…
In the context of robotic manipulation and grasping, the shift from a view that is static (force closure of a single posture) and contact-deprived (only contact for force closure is allowed, everything else is obstacle) towards a view that is dynamic and contact-rich (soft manipulation) has led to a…
To leverage soft hands to their full potential for grasping, we propose to design their morphology and control signals together. Considering both parameter domains makes it easier and faster to find solutions compared to fixing parameters of either domain. Additionally, the approach scales well to h…
Handshakes are common greetings, and humans therefore have strong priors of what a handshake should feel like. This makes it challenging to create compelling and realistic human-robot handshakes, necessitating the consideration of human haptic perception in the design of robot hands. At its most bas…
In many robotic applications, softness leads to improved performance, robustness, and safety, while lowering manufacturing cost, increasing versatility, and simplifying control. The advantages of soft robots derive from the fact that their behavior partially results from interactions of the robot's…
Soft pneumatic hands offer the advantage of intrinsic mechanical compliance. We argue that to fully leverage the compliance available in soft pneumatic actuators, they should be controlled using air mass rather than position or force, as is customary in most research in soft robotics. We propose an…
The ability to selectively stiffen otherwise compliant soft actuators increases their versatility and dexterity. We investigate granular jamming and layer jamming as two possible methods to achieve stiffening with PneuFlex actuators, a type of soft continuum actuator. The paper details five designs…