Publications related to Concept of modular flexure-based mechanisms for ultra-high precision robot design

Gas Sensing with Rotary-Wing Nano Aerial Vehicles

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

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

Design considerations for robotically assembled through-tenon timber joints

Pierre Latteur, Yves Weinand, Julien Gamerro, Nicolas Henry Pierre Louis Rogeau

This research investigates the robotic assembly of timber structures connected by wood–wood connections. As the digitization of the timber construction sector progresses, digital tools, such as industrial robotic arms and Computer Numerical Control machine ...

2022

VIO-UWB-Based Collaborative Localization and Dense Scene Reconstruction within Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Systems

Fabrizio Schiano

Effective collaboration in multi-robot systems requires accurate and robust estimation of relative localization: from cooperative manipulation to collaborative sensing, and including cooperative exploration or cooperative transportation. This paper introdu ...

IEEE2022

Design-to-Fabrication Workflow for Raw-Sawn-Timber using Joinery Solver

Petras Vestartas

Currently, the Swiss timber industry in mountain areas largely exports unprocessed lumber and imports finished timber products due to the lack of digital tools. By using new digital design-to-production workflows, it is possible to investigate new building ...

EPFL2021

An integrated design tool for timber plate structures to generate joints geometry, fabrication toolpath, and robot trajectories

Pierre Latteur, Yves Weinand, Nicolas Henry Pierre Louis Rogeau

This paper presents an integrated design tool for structures composed of engineered timber panels that are connected by traditional wood joints. Recent advances in computational architecture have permitted to automate the fabrication and assembly of such s ...

2021

An untethered mechanically-intelligent inchworm robot powered by a shape memory alloy oscillator

Paolo Germano, Yves Perriard, Sean Thomas, Thomas Guillaume Martinez

Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) based actuators have become ideal candidates for use in compact and lightweight applications. These smart materials have often been referred to as artificial muscles due to their high work volume density. In this paper, a flexure-b ...

2021

Design of a Flexible Articulated Robotic Hand for a Humanoid Robot

Daniel Thalmann, Jing Liu

It is often desirable for humanoid robots to have dexterous hands and perform human-like grasps. This requires a deliberate design of hands, in addition to a good actuation system and an efficient 3D vision system. In this paper, we present a simple method ...

IEEE2019

SCALAR: Simultaneous Calibration of 2-D Laser and Robot Kinematic Parameters Using Planarity and Distance Constraints

Teguh Santoso Lembono

In this paper, we propose SCALAR, a calibration method to simultaneously calibrate the kinematic parameters of a 6-DoF robot and the extrinsic parameters of a 2-D laser range finder (LRF) attached to the robot's flange. The calibration setup requires only ...

2019

Cellulo: Tangible Haptic Swarm Robots for Learning

Ayberk Özgür

Robots are steadily becoming one of the significant 21st century learning technologies that aim to improve education within both formal and informal environments. Such robots, called Robots for Learning, have so far been utilized as constructionist tools o ...

EPFL2018

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

Challenges in visual and inertial information gathering for a sprawling posture robot

Auke Ijspeert, Tomislav Horvat, Kamilo Andres Melo Becerra, Mahsa Parsapour

We discuss challenges a sprawling posture legged robot faces when moving in a complex environment. These kind of robots can be used for search and rescue applications when proper sensors are used and placed correctly. Finding an adequate position for placi ...

2017

Design and control of a low profile electromagnetic actuator for foldable pop-up mechanisms

Jamie Paik, Amir Firouzeh, Fabio Zuliani, Marco Salerno

Thin foldable origami mechanisms bring miniaturization and reconfiguration of complex structures allowing large volumetric change, low cost and versatility. Many applications require small robots with multiple capabilities including movement, sensing and c ...

Elsevier Science Sa2017

The Making of a 3D-Printed, Cable-Driven, Single-Model, Lightweight Humanoid Robotic Hand

Daniel Thalmann

Dexterity robotic hands can (Cummings, 1996) greatly enhance the functionality of humanoid robots, but the making of such hands with not only human-like appearance but also the capability of performing the natural movement of social robots is a challenging ...

Frontiers Media Sa2017

Compliant snake robot locomotion on horizontal pipes

Auke Ijspeert, Massimo Vespignani, Kamilo Andres Melo Becerra, Mehmet Hasan Mutlu

In this paper we introduce a body-compliant Modular Snake Robot executing rolling gaits on different cylindrical geometries. In the state of the art it is considered that an active shape adaptation to the terrain while a gait is executed produces better pe ...

2015

Lidar-Based Relative Position Estimation and Tracking for Multi-Robot Systems

Alcherio Martinoli, José Nuno Ferreira Maia Pereira, Alicja Barbara Roelofsen, Rodrigo Martins de Matos Ventura

Relative positioning systems play a vital role in current multi-robot systems. We present a self-contained detection and tracking approach, where a robot estimates a distance (range) and an angle (bearing) to another robot using measurements extracted from ...

Springer2015

A Collision Resilient Flying Robot

Jean-Christophe Zufferey, Dario Floreano, Adrien Briod, Przemyslaw Mariusz Kornatowski

Flying robots that can locomote efficiently in GPS-denied cluttered environments have many applications, such as in search and rescue scenarios. However, dealing with the high amount of obstacles inherent to such environments is a major challenge for flyin ...

John Wiley & Sons2014

Roombots: A Hardware Perspective on 3D Self-Reconfiguration and Locomotion with a Homogeneous Modular Robot

Auke Ijspeert, Rico Möckel, Alexander Spröwitz, Stéphane Bonardi, Massimo Vespignani

In this work we provide hands-on experience on designing and testing a self-reconfiguring modular robotic system, Roombots (RB), to be used among others for adaptive furniture. In the long term, we envision that RB can be used to create sets of furniture, ...

Elsevier2014

Collaborative Manipulation and Transport of Passive Pieces Using the Self-Reconfigurable Modular Robots Roombots

Auke Ijspeert, Rico Möckel, Stéphane Bonardi, Massimo Vespignani

Manipulation and transport of objects using mobile robotic platforms is a well studied field with several successful approaches. The main difficulty while using such platforms is the lack of adaptation capabilities to changes in the environment and the res ...

2013

Energy-Time Efficiency in Aerial Swarm Deployment

Dario Floreano, Timothy Stirling

A major challenge in swarm robotics is efficiently deploying robots into unknown environments, minimising energy and time costs. This is especially important with small aerial robots which have extremely limited flight autonomy. This paper compares three d ...

Springer-Verlag Berlin2013