Octopus‐Inspired Soft Arm with Suction Cups for Enhanced Grasping Tasks in Confined Environments

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An Amphibious Fully-Soft Miniature Crawling Robot Powered by Electrohydraulic Fluid Kinetic Energy

Miniature locomotion robots with the ability to navigate confined environments show great promise for a wide range of tasks, including search and rescue operations. Soft miniature locomotion robots, as a burgeoning field, have attracted significant research interest due to their exceptional terrain adaptability and safety features. In this paper, we introduce a fully-soft miniature crawling robot directly powered by fluid kinetic energy generated by an electrohydraulic actuator. Through optimization of the operating voltage and design parameters, the crawling velocity of the robot is dramatically enhanced, reaching 16 mm/s. The optimized robot weighs 6.3 g and measures 5 cm in length, 5 cm in width, and 6 mm in height. By combining two robots in parallel, the robot can achieve a turning rate of approximately 3 degrees/s. Additionally, by reconfiguring the distribution of electrodes in the electrohydraulic actuator, the robot can achieve 2 degrees-of-freedom translational motion, improving its maneuverability in narrow spaces. Finally, we demonstrate the use of a soft water-proof skin for underwater locomotion and actuation. In comparison with other soft miniature crawling robots, our robot with full softness can achieve relatively high crawling velocity as well as increased robustness and recovery

Power-efficient adaptive behavior through a shape-changing elastic robot

The adaptive morphology of a robot, such as shape adaptation, plays a significant role in adapting its behaviors. Shape adaptation should ideally be achieved without considerable cost, like the power required to deform the robot’s body, and therefore, it is reasonably considered as the last resort in classical rigid robots. However, the last decade has seen an increasing interest in soft robots: robots that can achieve deformability through their inherent material properties or structural compliance. Nevertheless, the dynamics of these types of robots is often complex and therefore it is difficult to substantiate whether the cost like the required power for changing its shape will be worthwhile to achieve the desired behavior. This article presents an approach in the development and analysis of a shape-changing locomoting robot, which relies on the ability of elastic beams to deform and vibrate. Through a proper use of elastic materials and the robot’s vibration-based dynamics, it will be shown both analytically and experimentally how shape adaptation can be designed such that it leads to desirable behaviors, with better power efficiency compared to when the robot solely relies on changing its control input. The results encourage emerging direction in robotics that investigates approaches to change robots’ behaviors through their adaptive morphology. </jats:p

Integration of Polyimide Flexible PCB Wings in Northeastern Aerobat

The principal aim of this Master's thesis is to propel the optimization of the membrane wing structure of the Northeastern Aerobat through origami techniques and enhancing its capacity for secure hovering within confined spaces. Bio-inspired drones offer distinctive capabilities that pave the way for innovative applications, encompassing wildlife monitoring, precision agriculture, search and rescue operations, as well as the augmentation of residential safety. The evolved noise-reduction mechanisms of birds and insects prove advantageous for drones utilized in tasks like surveillance and wildlife observation, ensuring operation devoid of disturbances. Traditional flying drones equipped with rotary or fixed wings encounter notable constraints when navigating narrow pathways. While rotary and fixed-wing systems are conventionally harnessed for surveillance and reconnaissance, the integration of onboard sensor suites within micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) has garnered interest in vigilantly monitoring hazardous scenarios in residential settings. Notwithstanding the agility and commendable fault tolerance exhibited by systems such as quadrotors in demanding conditions, their inflexible body structures impede collision tolerance, necessitating operational spaces free of collisions. Recent years have witnessed an upsurge in integrating soft and pliable materials into the design of such systems; however, the pursuit of aerodynamic efficiency curtails the utilization of excessively flexible materials for rotor blades or propellers. This thesis introduces a design that integrates polyimide flexible PCBs into the wings of the Aerobat and employs guard design incorporating feedback-driven stabilizers, enabling stable hovering flights within Northeastern's Robotics-Inspired Study and Experimentation (RISE) cage.Comment: 42 pages,20 figure

Puffer: Pop-Up Flat Folding Explorer Robot

A repeatably reconfigurable robot, comprising at least two printed circuit board (PCB) rigid sections, at least one PCB flexible section coupled to the at least two PCB rigid sections, at least one wheel, hybrid wheel propeller, wheel and propeller, or hybrid wheel screw propeller rotatably coupled to at least one of the at least two PCB rigid sections and at least one actuator coupled to the at least two PCB rigid sections, wherein the at least one actuator folds and unfolds the repeatably reconfigurable robot

Snake-Like Robots for Minimally Invasive, Single Port, and Intraluminal Surgeries

The surgical paradigm of Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) has been a key driver to the adoption of robotic surgical assistance. Progress in the last three decades has led to a gradual transition from manual laparoscopic surgery with rigid instruments to robot-assisted surgery. In the last decade, the increasing demand for new surgical paradigms to enable access into the anatomy without skin incision (intraluminal surgery) or with a single skin incision (Single Port Access surgery - SPA) has led researchers to investigate snake-like flexible surgical devices. In this chapter, we first present an overview of the background, motivation, and taxonomy of MIS and its newer derivatives. Challenges of MIS and its newer derivatives (SPA and intraluminal surgery) are outlined along with the architectures of new snake-like robots meeting these challenges. We also examine the commercial and research surgical platforms developed over the years, to address the specific functional requirements and constraints imposed by operations in confined spaces. The chapter concludes with an evaluation of open problems in surgical robotics for intraluminal and SPA, and a look at future trends in surgical robot design that could potentially address these unmet needs.Comment: 41 pages, 18 figures. Preprint of article published in the Encyclopedia of Medical Robotics 2018, World Scientific Publishing Company www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789813232266_000

Nonparametric Online Learning Control for Soft Continuum Robot: An Enabling Technique for Effective Endoscopic Navigation.

Bioinspired robotic structures comprising soft actuation units have attracted increasing research interest. Taking advantage of its inherent compliance, soft robots can assure safe interaction with external environments, provided that precise and effective manipulation could be achieved. Endoscopy is a typical application. However, previous model-based control approaches often require simplified geometric assumptions on the soft manipulator, but which could be very inaccurate in the presence of unmodeled external interaction forces. In this study, we propose a generic control framework based on nonparametric and online, as well as local, training to learn the inverse model directly, without prior knowledge of the robot's structural parameters. Detailed experimental evaluation was conducted on a soft robot prototype with control redundancy, performing trajectory tracking in dynamically constrained environments. Advanced element formulation of finite element analysis is employed to initialize the control policy, hence eliminating the need for random exploration in the robot's workspace. The proposed control framework enabled a soft fluid-driven continuum robot to follow a 3D trajectory precisely, even under dynamic external disturbance. Such enhanced control accuracy and adaptability would facilitate effective endoscopic navigation in complex and changing environments