Soft Robotics

The CSAIL team hopes their technology can be used to create wearable devices that provide feedback on how the user is moving. 

CSAIL’s Perceptual Science Group created touch sensors for their gripper, allowing it to feel with the same sensitivity as human skin. 

The researchers are hoping to create robots made from many individual units that act individually but cooperatively. 

The robots could be used in swarms to pollinate a field of crops, or to search for survivors in disaster areas.

The key to the team’s actuator’s quick movements is in its bi-stable design, and the shape it prefers depends on the temperature.

A research team from five different universities developed robotic grippers inspired by insects that are able to handle delicate objects.

A computer model relates a finger’s desired position to the corresponding pressure a pump would have to apply to achieve that position. Using this model, the team developed a controller that directs the pneumatic system to inflate the fingers.

Guided by a set program that autonomously switched between off, low, medium, and high pressures, the robotic hand was able to press the buttons on the controller to successfully complete the first level of Super Mario Bros. in less than 90 seconds.

The Soft Bubble Gripper uses visuo-tactile sensing techniques that allow a robot to recognize objects by shape, track their orientation in its grasp and sense forces as it interacts with the world.

Soft Robotics has added JMP Solutions to its Preferred System Integrator program. This partnership will help expand robotic adoption in the food sector enabled by Soft Robotics food-grade soft gripping, 3D vision, and AI technologies. Soft Robotics Preferred System Integrator Program is an initiative to help integrators win more business with its industry-leading technologies, including…

There are some tasks traditional robots – the rigid and metallic kind – simply aren’t cut out for. Soft-bodied robots, on the other hand, may be able to interact with people more safely or slip into tight spaces with ease. But for robots to reliably complete their programmed duties, they need to know the whereabouts…

This quadruped developed at UCSD relies on a series of valves that open and close in a specific sequence to walk.

Cornell University researchers created a low-cost method for soft robots to detect a range of physical interactions, from pats to punches to hugs, without relying on touch at all. Instead, a USB camera located inside the robot captures the shadow movements of hand gestures on the robot’s skin and classifies them with machine-learning software. The…

Scientists often look to nature for cues when designing robots – some robots mimic human hands while others simulate the actions of octopus arms or inchworms. Now, researchers in the University of Georgia College of Engineering have designed a new soft robotic gripper that draws inspiration from an unusual source: pole beans. While pole beans…

Northwestern University researchers have developed lifelike soft materials that could be used as microscopic delivery systems for production of fuels and drugs, environmental cleanup, or transformative medical procedures.

Piab has extended its piSoftgrip family with a new pinch gripper developed for the automation of the food/chocolate industry. The vacuum-based soft gripper can grip sensitive and lightweight oblong objects with odd geometries and/or objects with an unusual surface. piSoftgrip has two gripping fingers and a sealed vacuum cavity, all made in one piece, resulting…

The U.S. Army and MIT are exploring how metamaterials can help form modular robotic building blocks for transforming robots that can be reconfigured into different shapes and functions.

Nature has inspired engineers at UNSW Sydney to develop a soft fabric robotic gripper that behaves like an elephant’s trunk to grasp, pick up and release objects without breaking them. The researchers say the versatile technology could be widely applied in sectors where fragile objects are handled, such as agriculture, food and the scientific and…

In his RoboBusiness Direct session, recognized Harvard University professor Conor Walsh will examine how his team or researchers have developed soft, wearable robotics for industrial use.

Toyota Research Institute demonstrated its research into machine learning, simulation, and manipulation in a virtual open house, which included a ceiling-mounted kitchen gantry robot.

Vanderbilt University researchers say they have determined that a wearable exosuit they designed can relieve fatigue by 29% to 47% in lower back muscles.

The Soft Bubble Gripper developed by a Toyota Research Institute team combines sensors and advanced materials to more safely handle objects in a step toward household robots.