Publications related to Modular methodology to design high precision parallel robots and application to a 5-Degree of Freedom flexure-based manipulator

Gas Sensing with Rotary-Wing Nano Aerial Vehicles

Harmful chemical compounds are released daily in warehouses, chemical plants and during environmental emergencies. Their uncontrolled dispersion contributes to the pollution of the atmosphere and threatens human and animal lives. When gas leaks occur, the ...

EPFL2024

Avian-Inspired Claws Enable Robot Perching or Walking

Dario Floreano, Won Dong Shin, William John Stewart, Mohammad Askari

Multimodal unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rarely capable of more than two modalities, i.e., flying and walking or flying and perching. However, being able to fly, perch, and walk could further improve their usefulness by expanding their operating enve ...

2023

The science of soft robot design: A review of motivations, methods and enabling technologies

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Francesco Stella

Novel technologies, fabrication methods, controllers and computational methods are rapidly advancing the capabilities of soft robotics. This is creating the need for design techniques and methodologies that are suited for the multi-disciplinary nature of s ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2023

Flexure Variable Stiffness Actuators

Jamie Paik, Mustafa Mete, Frédéric Henri Vaskin Giraud

Series elastic actuators (SEAs) and variable elastic actuators (VSAs) provide shock resistance, energy storage, and stable force control. However, they usually require extra springs, mechanical parts, and transmissions, increasing size, weight, number of m ...

2022

Neural Joint Space Implicit Signed Distance Functions for Reactive Robot Manipulator Control

Aude Billard, Nadia Barbara Figueroa Fernandez, Mikhail Koptev

In this paper, we present an approach for learning a neural implicit signed distance function expressed in joint space coordinates, that efficiently computes distance-to-collisions for arbitrary robotic manipulator configurations. Computing such distances ...

2022

Synthesis of Novel Integrated Actuators Powered by Shape Memory Alloys

Sean Thomas

In the modern age of miniaturisation, Smart Materials, a type of material that reacts mechanically to a certain stimulus, have become an integral part of this revolution. Among these materials, Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs), which have the highest volumetric ...

EPFL2022

Active origami platforms for human-robot interactions

Frédéric Henri Vaskin Giraud

Robots are employed to assist humans in lengthy, challenging, and repetitive tasks. However, the fields of rehabilitation, haptics, and assistive robotics have shown a significant need to support and interact with people in their everyday life. To facilita ...

EPFL2022

Design considerations for robotically assembled through-tenon timber joints

Yves Weinand, Julien Gamerro, Nicolas Henry Pierre Louis Rogeau, Pierre Latteur

This research investigates the robotic assembly of timber structures connected by wood–wood connections. As the digitization of the timber construction sector progresses, digital tools, such as industrial robotic arms and Computer Numerical Control machine ...

2022

Scalable Fabrication and Actuation of a Human Inspired Hand Through 3D Printed Flexures and Combinatorial Actuation

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge, Carlo Bosio

The fabrication and control of robot hands with biologically inspired structure remains challenging due to its cost and complexity. In this paper we explore how widely available FDM printers can be used to fabricate complex hand structures by leveraging co ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2022

Memory of Motion for Initializing Optimization in Robotics

Teguh Santoso Lembono

Many robotics problems are formulated as optimization problems. However, most optimization solvers in robotics are locally optimal and the performance depends a lot on the initial guess. For challenging problems, the solver will often get stuck at poor loc ...

EPFL2022