Publications related to Robot end effector

Small-scale robotic devices for medical interventions in the brain

Mahmut Selman Sakar, Lorenzo Francesco John Noseda

This article summarizes the recent advancements in the design, fabrication, and control of microrobotic devices for the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders. With a focus on diverse actuation methods, we discuss how advancements in materials science ...

2024

Towards edible robots and robotic food

Dario Floreano, Bokeon Kwak, Markéta Pankhurst, Jun Shintake

Edible robots and robotic food — edible systems that perceive, process and act upon stimulation — could open a new range of opportunities in health care, environmental management and the promotion of healthier eating habits. For example, they could enable ...

2024

Hitting with Different Joints of a Robotic Manipulator

Aude Billard, Harshit Khurana

This paper builds up the skill of impact aware non prehensile manipulation through a hitting motion by allowing the robot arm to come in contact with the environment with parts other than its end effector. Hitting with other joints allows us to manipulate ...

2024

3D printed large amplitude torsional microactuators powered by ultrasound

Mahmut Selman Sakar, Mehdi Ali Gadiri, Junsun Hwang, Amit Yedidia Dolev

Here, we introduce a design, fabrication, and control methodology for large amplitude torsional microactuators powered by ultrasound. The microactuators are 3D printed from two polymers with drastically different elastic moduli as a monolithic compliant me ...

2024

Robot Learning using Tensor Networks

Suhan Narayana Shetty

In various robotics applications, the selection of function approximation methods greatly influences the feasibility and computational efficiency of algorithms. Tensor Networks (TNs), also referred to as tensor decomposition techniques, present a versatile ...

EPFL2024

Additively manufactured stretchable zipping electrostatic actuators

Giulio Grasso

The use of soft and stretchable materials allows the development of adaptive robotic systems and human-machine interfaces that are more natural and comfortable to interact with. One of the application fields that benefits the most from these compliant mate ...

EPFL2024

Exploiting Kinematic Redundancy for Robotic Grasping of Multiple Objects

Aude Billard, Kunpeng Yao

Humans coordinate the abundant degrees of freedom (DoFs) of hands to dexterously perform tasks in everyday life. We imitate human strategies to advance the dexterity of multi-DoF robotic hands. Specifically, we enable a robot hand to grasp multiple objects ...

2023

Multi-Source Fusion for Voxel-Based 7-DoF Grasping Pose Estimation

Zheng Dang, Fei Wang

In this work, we tackle the problem of 7-DoF grasping pose estimation(6-DoF with the opening width of parallel-jaw gripper) from point cloud data, which is a fundamental task in robotic manipulation. Most existing methods adopt 3D voxel CNNs as the backbon ...

IEEE2023

Exploration-based model learning with self-attention for risk-sensitive robot control

Sudong Lee

Model-based reinforcement learning for robot control offers the advantages of overcoming concerns on data collection and iterative processes for policy improvement in model-free methods. However, both methods use exploration strategy relying on heuristics ...

2023

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

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

Acoustic Levitation apparatus (Robotics Practicals)

Mahmut Selman Sakar, Lorenzo Francesco John Noseda, Amit Yedidia Dolev, Bora Yalcin

The following data contain the information and files, which are required to recreate and build the experimental setup that is described in the Laboratory manual. Further details can be found in the associated publication “A graduate laboratory experiment t ...

Zenodo2023

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

Robotic Assembly of Integrally-Attached Timber Plate Structures: From Computational Design to Automated Construction

Nicolas Henry Pierre Louis Rogeau

The digitization of timber construction, the emergence of engineered wood products, and the urgent need to drastically reduce buildings' environmental impact have given a rebirth to wood as a construction material. On the one hand, increasing the use of ti ...

EPFL2023

Plasmonic Nanofluids: Enhancing Photothermal Gradients toward Liquid Robots

Giulia Tagliabue, Matteo Bevione

In situ energy generation in soft, flexible, autonomous devices is challenging due to the need for highly stretchable and fault-resistant components. Nanofluids with pyro-, tribo-, or thermoelectric properties have recently emerged as promising solutions f ...

Amer Chemical Soc2023

Geometric and Learning Methods for Robots to Navigate in Human Crowds with Application to Smart Mobility Devices

David Julian Gonon

The thesis at hand is concerned with robots' navigation in human crowds. Specifically, methods are developed for planning a mobile robot's local motion between pedestrians, and they are evaluated in experiments where a robot interacts with real pedestrians ...

EPFL2023

Geometric Algebra for Optimal Control With Applications in Manipulation Tasks

Sylvain Calinon, Tobias Löw

Many problems in robotics are fundamentally problems of geometry, which have led to an increased research effort in geometric methods for robotics in recent years. The results were algorithms using the various frameworks of screw theory, Lie algebra, and d ...

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC2023

Soft Bending Actuator With Fiber-Jamming Variable Stiffness and Fiber-Optic Proprioception

Sudong Lee

Soft actuators with a function of variable stiffness are beneficial to the improvement of the adaptability of robots, expanding the application areas and environments. We propose a tendon-driven soft bending actuator that can change its stiffness using fib ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2023

Thermally Drawn Elastomer Nanocomposites for Soft Mechanical Sensors

Fabien Sorin, Stella Andréa Françoise Laperrousaz, Yunpeng Qu, Andreas Leber, Chaoqun Dong, Inès Richard

Stretchable and conductive nanocomposites are emerging as important constituents of soft mechanical sensors for health monitoring, human-machine interactions, and soft robotics. However, tuning the materials' properties and sensor structures to the targete ...

WILEY2023

Improving hand prosthesis control with advanced single-finger proportional decoding and robotic shared control

Vincent Alexandre Mendez

Myoelectric prostheses allow users to recover lost functionality by controlling a robotic device with their remaining muscle activity. Commercial devices usually use a two-recording-channel system placed on specific muscles to control a single degree of fr ...

EPFL2023