Doctoral

With the advent of more capable and cheaper legged robots, robotic legged locomotion is becoming an increasingly attractive solution for locomotion and embodiment. Legs offer expanded capability over wheeled robots, albeit at the cost of complexity and efficiency. For example, walking robots explore rubble-filled caves, inspect industrial sites, move around human spaces (e.g., stairs), and […]

Materials with electroprogrammable stiffness and adhesion can enhance the performance of robotic systems but achieving large changes in stiffness and adhesive forces in real time is an ongoing challenge. Electroadhesive clutches can rapidly adhere high stiffness elements, although their low force capacities, high activation voltages, and inability to separate and turn off stiffness changes reliably […]