8 papers
SPROUT: The Open-Source Soft Growing Robot for Search and Rescue
Antonio Alvarez Valdivia, Ciera McFarland, Robert Reeve +5
Soft robotic systems have long been theorized as ideal candidates for use in search and rescue operations; however, there have been significant barriers to entry in graduating soft…
Distributed Acoustic Localization Array Deployed Using a Soft Everting Vine Robot
Sebastian Lorca Godoy, Ciera McFarland, Michael Val +3
Soft robot exteroception is increasingly being explored for a variety of field applications. In this work, we present a sound-based system for localizing disaster victims in confin…
Gotta Grow Fast: Design and Benchmarking of a Tip Mount for High-Speed Vine Robots
Antonio Alvarez Valdivia, Robert Reeve, Ankush Dhawan +4
Soft, growing vine robots extend through tip eversion, a mechanism that enables navigation through cluttered environments. However, integrating cameras and other sensors at the tip…
Fabric Pneumatic Artificial Muscle-Based Head-Neck Exosuit: Design, Modeling, and Evaluation
Katalin Schäffer, Ian Bales, Haohan Zhang +1
Wearable exosuits assist human movement in tasks ranging from rehabilitation to daily activities; specifically, head-neck support is necessary for patients with certain neurologica…
Evaluating Accuracy of Vine Robot Shape Sensing with Distributed Inertial Measurement Units
Alexis E. Laudenslager, Antonio Alvarez Valdivia, Nathaniel Hanson +1
Soft, tip-extending vine robots are well suited for navigating tight, debris-filled environments, making them ideal for urban search and rescue. Sensing the full shape of a vine ro…
Modeling Collapse of Steered Vine Robots Under Their Own Weight
Ciera McFarland, Margaret McGuinness
Soft, vine-inspired growing robots that move by eversion are highly mobile in confined environments, but, when faced with gaps in the environment, they may collapse under their own…
RubbleSim: A Photorealistic Structural Collapse Simulator for Confined Space Mapping
Constantine Frost, Chad Council, Margaret McGuinness +1
Despite well-reported instances of robots being used in disaster response, there is scant published data on the internal composition of the void spaces within structural collapse i…
On Steerability Factors for Growing Vine Robots
Ciera McFarland, Antonio Alvarez, Sarah Taher +2
Vine robots extend their tubular bodies by everting material from the tip, enabling navigation in complex environments with a minimalist soft body. Despite their promise for field…