Publications related to On-Board Mechanical Control Systems for Untethered Microrobots

Related publications (23)

Wafer-Level Microfabrication of Zipping Electrohydraulic Actuators for Soft Milli-Robots

Herbert Shea, Florian Fernand Hartmann, Shai-Shmuel Shmulevich

Miniaturizing soft robots is often limited by scaling down actuators while keeping high energy density and good response time. In this work we demonstrate the wafer-level microfabrication of electrostatic zipping soft actuators, similar to peano-HASELs. Th ...

IEEE2025

Mechanoreceptive soft robotic molluscoids made of granular hydrogel-based organoelectronics

Esther Amstad, Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Nana Obayashi, Lorenzo Lucherini, Francesca Bono

The viscoelasticity of many soft polymers renders flexible sensors susceptible to hysteresis and signal drift that limit their accuracy. To reduce the impact of viscoelasticity on the signal without compromising the softness of the material, we introduce e ...

2025

DiffCheck: A scan-CAD evaluation tool for digital manufacturing and assembly processes in timber construction

Yves Weinand, Julien Gamerro, Stefana Parascho, Andrea Settimi, Marianthi Eririni Kladeftira, Eleni Maria Skevaki, Damien Lambert Alain Félicien Gilliard

In digital timber construction, scanning technologies and point cloud data are widely used due to the accessibility of affordable 3D sensors, photogrammetry, and userfriendly CAD tools. While typically not employed for accuracy checks in timber fabrication ...

CRC Press2025

A Bio-Inspired Learning and Control Framework for Cross-Embodiment and Cross-Task Locomotion

Milad Shafiee Ashtiani

Animals exhibit remarkable locomotion skills despite significant sensorimotor delays and operating in uncertain environments. Moreover, mammals acquire these skills within minutes of birth. From the Cambrian explosion to the present day, vertebrate motor c ...

EPFL2025

Enabling Faster Locomotion of Planetary Rovers With a Mechanically-Hybrid Suspension

David Rodriguez Martinez

The exploration of the lunar poles and the collection of samples from the martian surface are characterized by shorter time windows demanding increased autonomy and speeds. Autonomous mobile robots must intrinsically cope with a wider range of disturbances ...

2024

Design of multi-stimuli responsive hybrid pneumatic-magnetic soft actuator with novel channel integration

Yi Sun

Smart polymeric materials based soft actuators are flexible, lightweight, and can deliver a wide range of actu-ations. Thus, they are ideal for applications requiring delicate and unconventional motions, such as biomedical and soft robotics. This paper rep ...

2022

Hybrid Wireless-Local Communication via Information Propagation for Modular Robotic Synchronization Applications

Jamie Paik, Christoph Heinrich Belke, Kevin Andrew Holdcroft

Modular robots hold promise of adaptability, robustness, and versatility. Synchronization of modules is critical; if a module is asynchronous, not only will the robot fail to perform tasks properly, but its behavior may be self-destructive through self-col ...

WILEY2022

Compact Pneumatic Clutch With Integrated Stiffness Variation and Position Feedback

Jamie Paik

Stiffness variation and real-time position feedback are critical for any robotic system but most importantly for active and wearable devices to interact with the user and environment. Currently, for compact sizes, there is a lack of solutions bringing high ...

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC2021

Wearable Soft Technologies for Haptic Sensing and Feedback

Herbert Shea, Ronan Julien Hinchet

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) systems have garnered recent widespread attention due to increased accessibility, functionality, and affordability. These systems sense user inputs and typically provide haptic, audio, and visual feedback to ...

WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH2020

Ori-Pixel, a Multi-DoFs Origami Pixel for Modular Reconfigurable Surfaces

Jamie Paik, Stefano Mintchev, Marco Salerno

Reconfigurable surfaces using robotic pixels can produce discretize 3D contours, shapes and motion patterns. In existing devices, the rendering resolution and richness of shapes and patterns are limited by the use of linear pixels that only produce single ...

2020

Single chamber multiple degree-of-freedom soft pneumatic actuator enabled by adjustable stiffness layers

Jamie Paik, Marco Salerno, Sébastien Douglas de Rivaz

Soft pneumatic actuators promise simple, adaptable, and safe manipulation, but the nature of pneumatic circuits limits the scalability of this approach. This paper introduces a method to augment the degrees-of-freedom of soft pneumatic actuators without in ...

2019

Designing Minimal and Scalable Insect-Inspired Multi-Locomotion Millirobots

Jamie Paik, Zhenishbek Zhakypov

In ant colonies, collectivity enables division of labour and resources with great scalability. Beyond their intricate social behaviours, individuals of the genus Odontomachus, also known as trap-jaw ants, have developed remarkable multi-locomotion mechanis ...

2019

Design Methodology for Constructing Multimaterial Origami Robots and Machines

Jamie Paik, Zhenishbek Zhakypov

Robotic origami allows rapid prototyping of intelligent robots and machines constructed from thin sheets of functional materials. Multimaterial-based design freedom of origami robots creates functional versatility; however, the design parameters pose chall ...

2018

New soft robots really suck: Vacuum-powered systems empower diverse capabilities

Jamie Paik, Matthew Aaron Robertson

We introduce a vacuum-powered soft pneumatic actuator (V-SPA) that leverages a single, shared vacuum power supply and enables complex soft robotic systems with multiple degrees of freedom (DoFs) and diverse functions. In addition to actuation, other utilit ...

2017

Model predictive control based framework for CoM control of a quadruped robot

Auke Ijspeert, Kamilo Andres Melo Becerra, Tomislav Horvat

Model Predictive Control is becoming more and more present in robotic applications. It has been successfully used in control of humanoid robots to adjust positions of the footsteps in order to satisfy stability constraints. In this paper we show how to ada ...

2017

On Designing an Active Tail for Legged Robots: Simplifying Control via Decoupling of Control Objectives

Auke Ijspeert, Massimo Vespignani, Peter Eckert, Mostafa Ajallooeian

This work explores the possible roles of active tails for steady-state legged-locomotion. A series of simple models are proposed which capture the dynamics of an idealized running system with an active tail. The models suggest that the control objectives o ...

Emerald Group Publishing Ltd2016

An artificial elementary eye with optic flow detection and compositional properties

Dario Floreano, Ramon Pericet Camara, Michal Karol Dobrzynski

We describe a 2 mg artificial elementary eye whose structure and functionality is inspired by compound eye ommatidia. Its optical sensitivity and electronic architecture are sufficient to generate the required signals for the measurement of local optic flo ...

2015

Miniature artificial compound eyes for optic-flow-based robotic navigation

Dario Floreano, Ramon Pericet Camara, Julien Jean Denis Nicolas Lecoeur

Miniature curved artificial compound eyes (CURVACE) represent a promising tool to assist in navigation of mobile robots. In particular, they feature ideal properties for minidrones to navigate safely in indoor environments due to its panoramic field of vie ...

IEEE2014

Hyper-flexible 1-D shape sensor

Dario Floreano, Stéphanie Lacour, Ramon Pericet Camara, Michal Karol Dobrzynski, Géraud L'Eplattenier

Here we describe a sensor capable of perceiving complex one-dimensional (1-D) shape of an underlying substrate in a static and dynamic manner. The sensor consists of seven, serially connected, hyper-flexible strain gauges, manufactured using stretchable-go ...

2013

Modeling Self-Assembly Across Scales: The Unifying Perspective of Smart Minimal Particles

Alcherio Martinoli, Massimo Mastrangeli, Grégory Mermoud

A wealth of current research in microengineering aims at fabricating devices of increasing complexity, notably by (self-)assembling elementary components into heterogeneous functional systems. At the same time, a large body of robotic research called swarm ...

2011