Publications by Kai Christian Junge

Mod-VSA: A Modular Variable Stiffness Actuator for Multi-fingered Robotic Hands

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge

Regulating contact forces is crucial for robotic manipulation, but achieving stiffness variation in multi-fingered hands is challenging due to design complexity. This work presents Mod-VSA, a modular variable stiffness actuator for multi-fingered tendon-dr ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.2025

Soft Pneumatic Gripper With Interchangeable Fingertips by Using Reversible Polymers: The GraspBerry, a Raspberry Picking Case Study

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge

Fingerprints primarily enhance grasping by modulating friction, as the surface pattern affects the friction needed for effective grasping and manipulation. A versatile gripper was developed with a more realistic distal phalange inspired by the human index ...

2025

Spatially distributed biomimetic compliance enables robust anthropomorphic robotic manipulation

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge

The impressive capabilities of humans to robustly perform manipulation stems from compliant interactions, enabled by the structure and materials distributed in the hands. We propose that mimicking this spatially distributed compliance in an anthropomorphic ...

Springer Science and Business Media LLC2025

Experimental assessment, design, and control of compliance in dexterous robotic hands

Kai Christian Junge

The ability to make compliant physical interactions enables robots to robustly contact with the environment. This plays a significant role in advancing robotic hands which must constantly interact with the world, often with large uncertainties and variatio ...

EPFL2025

Environmentally-Driven Morphogenesis of Reconfigurable Floating Structures using Markov Models

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge, Nana Obayashi

The morphology and structure play a crucial role in shaping the behavior and functionality of both biological and robotic systems. In this work, we are inspired by morphogenesis, a fundamental biological process that encompasses the emergence of organs and ...

IEEE2025

Soft robotics for farm to fork: applications in agriculture & farming

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge

Agricultural tasks and environments range from harsh field conditions with semi-structured produce or animals, through to post-processing tasks in food-processing environments. From farm to fork, the development and application of soft robotics offers a pl ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2024

Learning Motion Reconstruction from Demonstration via Multi-Modal Soft Tactile Sensing

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge, Kieran Daniel Gilday

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 propo ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.2024

Field-evaluated Closed Structure Soft Gripper Enhances the Shelf Life of Harvested Blackberries

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge

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 ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.2024

Rapid Action Evaluation and Optimization Through Mutual Information Using a Multi-Modal Soft Tactile Sensor

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge, Kieran Daniel Gilday

The extraction of tactile information from an environment depends on the action, sensor design, and the environment itself. This makes identifying an optimal action for a given task, i.e. classification, challenging and typically requires extensive data-ri ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.2024

Online Hydraulic Stiffness Modulation of a Soft Robotic Fish tail for Improved Thrust and Efficiency

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge, Nana Obayashi

This paper explores online stiffness modulation within a single tail stroke for swimming soft robots. Despite advances in stiffening mechanisms, little attention has been given to dynamically adjusting stiffness in real-time, presenting a challenge in deve ...

2024