Publications related to New horizons for patient safety: LIGRA (LIfe Guard for Robotic surgery Assistance) An interactive platform centralizing information and control in robotic surgery Operating Rooms

Filiform Variable Stiffness Technologies for Medical Robotics

In recent years, soft robotics has surged in applications like wearables, drones, smart fabrics, and medical instruments. Due to their compliance, these devices excel in tasks demanding dexterity and adaptability, such as manipulation, locomotion, crash re ...

EPFL2024

A Biohybrid Superorganism - Investigating honeybees' collective behaviors via interactive robotics

Rafael Botner Barmak

Social insects, such as ants, termites, and honeybees, have evolved sophisticated societies where the collaborative efforts of "simple" individuals can lead to the emergence of complex dynamics. The reliance of each organism on the collective is so great t ...

EPFL2024

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

Secure Interface Design Leveraging Hardware/Software Support

Atri Bhattacharyya

Computer systems rely heavily on abstraction to manage the exponential growth of complexity across hardware and software. Due to practical considerations of compatibility between components of these complex systems across generations, developers have favou ...

EPFL2024

Memento Mori: Reliable robustness in self-reconfigurable modular robots

Kevin Andrew Holdcroft

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

Investigating neural resource allocation in the sensorimotor control of extra limbs

Giulia Dominijanni

The rise of robotic body augmentation brings forth new developments that will transform robotics, human-machine interaction, and wearable electronics. Extra robotic limbs, although building upon restorative technologies, bring their own set of challenges i ...

EPFL2024

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

Small-scale robotic devices for medical interventions in the brain

Lorenzo Francesco John Noseda, Mahmut Selman Sakar

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

Quantifying the biomimicry gap in biohybrid robot-fish pairs

Francesco Mondada, Vaios Papaspyros

Biohybrid systems in which robotic lures interact with animals have become compelling tools for probing and identifying the mechanisms underlying collective animal behavior. One key challenge lies in the transfer of social interaction models from simulatio ...

2024

The Current State of the OBI DICT Project: A Bilingual e-Dictionary of Oracle-Bone Inscriptions with AI Image Recognition

This article reports on the current state of the OBI DICT project, a bilingual e-dictionary of oracle-bone inscriptions (OBI), incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) image recognition technology. It first provides a brief overview of the development of ...

Buro Van Die Wat2024

Distributed Predictive Formation Control of Autonomous Rotary-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles

Izzet Kagan Erünsal

This doctoral thesis navigates the complex landscape of motion coordination and formation control within teams of rotary-wing Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). Prompted by the intricate demands of real-world applications such as search and rescue or surveillan ...

EPFL2024

Sense in Motion with Belief Clustering: Efficient Gas Source Localization with Mobile Robots

Alcherio Martinoli, Wanting Jin

Given the patchy nature of gas plumes and the slow response of conventional gas sensors, the use of mobile robots for Gas Source Localization (GSL) tasks presents significant challenges. These aspects increase the difficulties in obtaining gas measurements ...

2024

Exact Obstacle Avoidance for Robots in Complex and Dynamic Environments Using Local Modulation

Lukas Huber

Robots outside of the fenced factories have to deal with continuously changing environment, this requires fast and flexible modes of control. Planning methods or complex learning models can find optimal paths in complex surroundings, but they are computati ...

EPFL2024

Avoidance of Concave Obstacles Through Rotation of Nonlinear Dynamics

Aude Billard, Lukas Huber

Controlling complex tasks in robotic systems, such as circular motion for cleaning or following curvy lines, can be dealt with using nonlinear vector fields. This article introduces a novel approach called the rotational obstacle avoidance method (ROAM) fo ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2024

3D printed large amplitude torsional microactuators powered by ultrasound

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

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

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

A Reduced Order Model for Domain Decompositions with Non-conforming Interfaces

Alfio Quarteroni, Andrea Manzoni

In this paper, we propose a reduced-order modeling strategy for two-way Dirichlet-Neumann parametric coupled problems solved with domain-decomposition (DD) sub-structuring methods. We split the original coupled differential problem into two sub-problems wi ...

Springer/Plenum Publishers2024

Fast-Response Variable-Stiffness Magnetic Catheters for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Dario Floreano, Jun Shintake, Yi Sun, Yegor Piskarev, Matteo Righi

In minimally invasive surgery, such as cardiac ablation, magnetically steered catheters made of variable-stiffness materials can enable higher dexterity and higher force application to human tissue. However, the long transition time between soft and rigid ...

2024

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

An objective skill assessment framework for microsurgical anastomosis based on ALI scores

Aude Billard, Anaëlle Olivia Marie Manon, Kunpeng Yao, Soheil Gholami, Torstein Ragnar Meling

IntroductionThe current assessment and standardization of microsurgical skills are subjective, posing challenges in reliable skill evaluation. We aim to address these limitations by developing a quantitative and objective framework for accurately assessing ...

Springer Wien2024