Publications by Vito Cacucciolo

Fiber pumps for wearable fluidic systems

Herbert Shea, Vito Cacucciolo, Michael James Henry Smith

Incorporating pressurized fluidic circuits into textiles can enable muscular support, thermoregulation, and haptic feedback in a convenient wearable form factor. However, conventional rigid pumps, with their associated noise and vibration, are unsuitable f ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science2023

Electroadhesive gripping system and method for gripping an object

Herbert Shea, Krishna Manaswi Digumarti, Vito Cacucciolo

An electroadhesive gripping system and a method for gripping and manipulating an object are disclosed. The invention provides a novel approach particularly useful to pick fabrics or otherwise flat and flexible objects including a method relying on electroa ...

2023

Research data supporting 'Fiber pumps for wearable fluidic systems'

Herbert Shea, Vito Cacucciolo, Michael James Henry Smith

The dataset supporting 'Fiber pumps for wearable fluidic systems', published in Science in March 2023. In this work, we present a fluidic pump in the form of a flexible and stretchable tube. These tubes - or 'fiber pumps' - can generate significant fluidic ...

2023

Peeling in electroadhesion soft grippers

Herbert Shea, Vito Cacucciolo

Electroadhesion endows robots with super-human abilities: mechanical geckoes that climb vertical walls and soft grippers that grasp the most delicate objects. Based on electrostatics, the adhesion forces are turned on and off by an electrical signal, promi ...

ELSEVIER2022

Shielded soft force sensors

Herbert Shea, Krishna Manaswi Digumarti, Bekir Aksoy, Vito Cacucciolo, Giulio Grasso, Yufei Hao

Capacitive soft force sensors require electrical shielding from electromagnetic interference, but this shielding can mess with the effectiveness of the sensing electrodes. Here, Aksoy et al. solve this problem by patterning the central sensing elastomer la ...

Nature Portfolio2022

Wireless Electrohydrodynamic Actuators for Propulsion and Positioning of Miniaturized Floating Robots

Vito Cacucciolo, Yu Kuwajima

Autonomous soft robots require compact actuators generating large strokes and high forces. Electro-fluidic actuators are especially promising, they combine the advantages of electroactive polymers (low-power consumption, fast response, and electrical power ...

WILEY2021

Dexterous textile manipulation using electroadhesive fingers

Herbert Shea, Krishna Manaswi Digumarti, Vito Cacucciolo

Handling of fabric is a crucial step in the manufacturing of garments. This task is typically performed by trained workers who manipulate one sheet at a time, thus introducing a bottleneck in the automation of the textile industry. This paper seeks to addr ...

IEEE2021

Electrically-Driven Soft Fluidic Actuators Combining Stretchable Pumps With Thin McKibben Muscles

Herbert Shea, Vito Cacucciolo

Soft wearable robots could provide support for lower and upper limbs, increase weight lifting ability, decrease energy required for walking and running, and even provide haptic feedback. However, to date most of wearable robots are based on electromagnetic ...

2020

Autonomous oil flow generated by self-oscillating polymer gels

Vito Cacucciolo

The previously reported gel and polymer actuators require external inputs, such as batteries, circuits, electronic circuits, etc., compared with autonomous motions produced by the living organisms. To realize the spontaneous motions, here, we propose to in ...

Nature Research2020

Untethered Feel‐Through Haptics Using 18‐µm Thick Dielectric Elastomer Actuators

Yves Perriard, Herbert Shea, Yoan René Cyrille Civet, Xinchang Liu, Xiaobin Ji, Vito Cacucciolo

Head‐mounted displays for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) allow users to see highly realistic virtual worlds. The wearable haptics that enable feeling and touching these virtual objects are typically bulky, tethered, and provide only low fi ...

2020

Stretchable electrohydrodynamic pump

Dario Floreano, Herbert Shea, Jun Shintake, Vito Cacucciolo

A stretchable pump for providing electrohydrodynamic pumping of a ionisable fluid, said soft pump comprising a stretchable polymeric structure comprising at least one elongated channel, therein; and a first set of at least two electrodes operatively dispos ...

2020

Delicate yet strong: characterizing the electro-adhesion lifting force with a soft gripper

Herbert Shea, Jun Shintake, Vito Cacucciolo

Compliant grippers are one of the most promising soft robotic devices for industrial tasks. Soft grippers dramatically simplify grasping control because the gripper automatically conforms to the object's shape. A common limitation of soft structures is tha ...

IEEE2019

An autonomous untethered fast soft robotic insect driven by low-voltage dielectric elastomer actuators

Yves Perriard, Herbert Shea, Yoan René Cyrille Civet, Xinchang Liu, Matthias Imboden, Xiaobin Ji, Vito Cacucciolo, Xinru Ji

Insects are a constant source of inspiration for roboticists. Their compliant bodies allow them to squeeze through small openings and be highly resilient to impacts. However, making subgram autonomous soft robots untethered and capable of responding intell ...

2019

Stretchable pumps for soft machines

Dario Floreano, Herbert Shea, Jun Shintake, Vito Cacucciolo, Yu Kuwajima

Machines made of soft materials bridge life sciences and engineering. Advances in soft materials have led to skin-like sensors and muscle-like actuators for soft robots and wearable devices. Flexible or stretchable counterparts of most key mechatronic comp ...

2019

Soft Robotic Grippers

Dario Floreano, Herbert Shea, Jun Shintake, Vito Cacucciolo

Advances in soft robotics, materials science, and stretchable electronics have enabled rapid progress in soft grippers. Here, a critical overview of soft robotic grippers is presented, covering different material sets, physical principles, and device archi ...

Wiley2018

Soft Biomimetic Fish Robot Made of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators

Dario Floreano, Herbert Shea, Jun Shintake, Vito Cacucciolo

This article presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of a soft biomimetic robotic fish based on dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) that swims by body and/or caudal fin (BCF) propulsion. BCF is a promising locomotion mechanism that potenti ...

2018