Robotics

Robotic navigation on land, through air, and in water is well researched; numerous robots have successfully demonstrated motion in these environments. However, one frontier for robotic locomotion remains largely unexplored—below…

A bioinspired soft robot burrows through shallow dry sand with remarkable speed and maneuverability. Source: Science Mag: Burrowing soft robots break new ground

Science fiction was prescient about many aspects of grasping and manipulation, but can it keep up with new advances? Source: Science Mag: Robots have grasped and manipulated the imagination since…

The ability to reliably grasp and manipulate novel objects is a grand challenge for robotics. Source: Science Mag: Getting a grip on reality

Tactile feedback is a natural pathway to robot dexterity in unstructured settings. Source: Science Mag: The unstable queen: Uncertainty, mechanics, and tactile feedback

The world outside our laboratories seldom conforms to the assumptions of our models. This is especially true for dynamics models used in control and motion planning for complex high–degree of…

The process of modeling a series of hand-object parameters is crucial for precise and controllable robotic in-hand manipulation because it enables the mapping from the hand’s actuation input to the…

Humans use all surfaces of the hand for contact-rich manipulation. Robot hands, in contrast, typically use only the fingertips, which can limit dexterity. In this work, we leveraged a potential…

The ability to grab, hold, and manipulate objects is a vital and fundamental operation in biological and engineering systems. Here, we present a soft gripper using a simple material system…

Policy gradient methods can be used for mechanical and computational co-design of robot manipulators. Source: Science Mag: Co-designing hardware and control for robot hands