4 accepted papers
Actuators are essential devices that exert force and do work. The contraction of an actuator (how much it can shorten) is an important property that strongly influences its applications, especially in engineering and robotics. While high contractions have been achieved by thermally- or fluidically-d…
In this letter, we investigate the viability of capacitance self-sensing of electro-ribbon actuators, allowing them to be used simultaneously as an actuator and a sensor. Initially the electro-ribbon actuator was implemented only as a sensor, and it was found that the exponential relationship betwee
Currently, the majority of wearable robotic haptic feedback devices rely on vibrations for relaying sensory information to the user. While this can be very effective, vibration as a physical stimulation is limited in modality and is uncommon in the natural world. In many cases, for human-robot and h
Various physical phenomena have been used to develop variable-stiffness (VS) materials and structures, but all have involved some elements of manual fabrication, which limits their applications. In contrast, here we show fully three-dimensional (3D) printed monolithic VS structures that can be used