Publications related to Climbing robot with thermal glue

Memento Mori: Reliable robustness in self-reconfigurable modular robots

Modular robotics link the reliability of a centralised system with the adaptivity of a decentralised system. It is difficult for a robot with a fixed shape to be able to perform many different types of tasks. As the task space grows, the number of functi ...

EPFL2024

Online Multicontact Receding Horizon Planning via Value Function Approximation

Sylvain Calinon, Teguh Santoso Lembono

Planning multicontact motions in a receding horizon fashion requires a value function to guide the planning with respect to the future, e.g., building momentum to traverse large obstacles. Traditionally, the value function is approximated by computing traj ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2024

Soft Robotics: A Route to Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity in Robotics

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes

Robotics is entering our daily lives. The discipline is increasingly crucial in fields such as agriculture, medicine, and rescue operations, impacting our food, health, and planet. At the same time, it is becoming evident that robotic research must embrace ...

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc2024

Gas Sensing with Rotary-Wing Nano Aerial Vehicles

Chiara Ercolani

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

Morphological flexibility in robotic systems through physical polygon meshing

Jamie Paik, Kevin Andrew Holdcroft, Christoph Heinrich Belke, Alexander Thomas Sigrist

Shape-changing robots adapt their own morphology to address a wider range of functions or environments than is possible with a fixed or rigid structure. Akin to biological organisms, the ability to alter shape or configuration emerges from the underlying m ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Liquid Metal-Based Sensor Skin Enabling Haptic Perception of Softness

Stéphanie Lacour, Ivan Furfaro, Emilio Fernández Lavado, Haotian Chen

Haptic perception of softness is a unique feature of the human skin that relies on the concurrent measurements of the lateral deformation and compression of the skin during object manipulation. This is challenging to implement in robotics because of combin ...

2023

Control and Morphology Optimization of Passive Asymmetric Structures for Robotic Swimming

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge, Nana Obayashi, Andrea Vicari, Kamran Shakir

Aquatic creatures exhibit remarkable adaptations of their body to efficiently interact with the surrounding fluid. The tight coupling between their morphology, motion, and the environment are highly complex but serves as a valuable example when creating bi ...

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC2023

Self-Correcting Quadratic Programming-Based Robot Control

Aude Billard, Farshad Khadivar, Konstantinos Chatzilygeroudis

Quadratic Programming (QP)-based controllers allow many robotic systems, such as humanoids, to successfully undertake complex motions and interactions. However, these approaches rely heavily on adequately capturing the underlying model of the environment a ...

2023

Learning and optimization of anticipatory feedback controllers for robot manipulation

Hakan Girgin

Programming intelligent robots requires robust controllers that can achieve desired tasks while adapting to the changes in the task and the environment. In this thesis, we address the challenges in designing such adaptive and anticipatory feedback controll ...

EPFL2023

Smell Driven Navigation for Soft Robotic Arms: Artificial Nose and Control

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Francesco Stella, Egidio Falotico

Elephants and other animals heavily rely on the sense of smell to operate. Soft robots would also benefit from an artificial sense of smell, which could be helpful in typical soft robotic tasks such as search and rescue, pipe inspection, and all the tasks ...

IEEE2023