Publications de Vivek Ramachandran

A Soft Gripper with Granular Jamming and Electroadhesive Properties

Pierre-Etienne Bourban, Dario Floreano, Jun Shintake, Vivek Ramachandran, Yegor Piskarev

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the development of universal soft grippers that can handle objects of varying form factors (including flat objects), surface conditions (including moistened or oily objects), and mechanical properties ( ...

2023

A multimodal measurement of the impact of deepfakes on the ethical reasoning and affective reactions of students

Touradj Ebrahimi, Patrick Jermann, Roland John Tormey, Cécile Hardebolle, Vivek Ramachandran, Nihat Kotluk

Deepfakes - synthetic videos generated by machine learning models - are becoming increasingly sophisticated. While they have several positive use cases, their potential for harm is also high. Deepfake production involves input from multiple engineers, maki ...

2023

The Digital Ethics Canvas: A Guide For Ethical Risk Assessment And Mitigation In The Digital Domain

Patrick Jermann, Adrian Christian Holzer, Cécile Hardebolle, Vivek Ramachandran, Vladimir Macko

Ethical concerns in the digital domain are growing with the extremely fast evolution of technology and the increasing scale at which software is deployed, potentially affecting our societies globally. It is crucial that engineers evaluate more systematical ...

2023

Enhancement of Pressure-Sensitive Adhesive by CO2 Laser Treatment

Dario Floreano, Jianhang Yang, Jun Shintake, Vivek Ramachandran, Yegor Piskarev, Michael Dickey

Pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) are polymeric films that can be adhered to and detached from surfaces without leaving residue. Researchers are looking to enhance the bond strength between PSAs and different substrates. It can be achieved by tuning PSA' ...

2022

Arm-wrist haptic sleeve for drone teleoperation

Dario Floreano, Matteo Macchini, Vivek Ramachandran

Teleoperators rely on both visual and haptic feedback to perform drone teleoperation tasks, such as obstacle avoidance. Haptic feedback becomes essential when visual feedback is compromised, either due to visual occlusions or poor depth perception. However ...

2022

Wearable Haptic Interfaces for Telerobotics

Vivek Ramachandran

Telerobotics is the process by which human operators control the movement of robots to achieve specific tasks. However, conventional control interfaces, such as joysticks and remote controllers, are not intuitive to use for novice users. Training to use th ...

EPFL2021

Smart Textiles that Teach: Fabric‐Based Haptic Device Improves the Rate of Motor Learning

Dario Floreano, Amy Roning Wu, Vivek Ramachandran, Fabian Maximilian Schilling

People learn motor activities best when they are conscious of their errors and make a concerted effort to correct them. While haptic interfaces can facilitate motor training, existing interfaces are often bulky and do not always ensure post-training skill ...

2021

Lighter and Stronger: Cofabricated Electrodes and Variable Stiffness Elements in Dielectric Actuators

Dario Floreano, Jun Shintake, Vivek Ramachandran, Yegor Piskarev, Michael Dickey

The inherent compliance of soft robots often makes it difficult for them to exert forces on surrounding surfaces or withstand mechanical loading. Controlled stiffness is a solution to empower soft robots with the ability to apply large forces on their envi ...

2020

Haptic feedback perception and learning with cable-driven guidance in exosuit teleoperation of a simulated drone

Dario Floreano, Auke Ijspeert, Carine Rognon, Amy Roning Wu, Vivek Ramachandran

Robotics teleoperation enables human operators to control the movements of distally located robots. The development of new wearable interfaces as alternatives to hand-held controllers has created new modalities of control, which are more intuitive to use. ...

2019

Variable stiffness strip with strain sensing for wearable robotics

Dario Floreano, Carine Rognon, Jun Shintake, Stefano Mintchev, Alice Tonazzini, Vivek Ramachandran

Variable stiffness technologies help to solve the conflicting requirements of strength, comfort, and safety in soft exoskeletons. Here, we propose a modular variable stiffness strip based on layer jamming as a mechanical solution to constrain users' degree ...

2018

All‐Fabric Wearable Electroadhesive Clutch

Dario Floreano, Jun Shintake, Vivek Ramachandran

A lightweight, textile fabricated, haptic device consisting of an electrostatic adhesive clutch is introduced, which can constrain body movement when activated at low power (≈1 mW). The clutch electrodes are composite structures, prepared by coating copper ...

Wiley2018

Deformation of Microchannels Embedded in an Elastic Medium

Vivek Ramachandran

The deformation of microfluidic channels in a soft elastic medium has a central role in the operation of lab-on-a-chip devices, fluidic soft robots, liquid metal (LM) electronics, and other emerging soft-matter technologies. Understanding the influence of ...

ASME2018