Magnetic-Field-Inspired Navigation for Robots in Complex and Unknown Environments.

Over the course of the past decade, we have witnessed a huge expansion in robotic applications, most notably from well-defined industrial environments into considerably more complex environments. The obstacles that these environments often contain present robotics with a new challenge - to equip robots with a real-time capability of avoiding them. In this paper, we propose a magnetic-field-inspired navigation method that significantly has several advantages over alternative systems.

Elasticity Versus Hyperelasticity Considerations in Quasistatic Modeling of a Soft Finger-Like Robotic Appendage for Real-Time Position and Force Estimation.

Various methods based on hyperelastic assumptions have been developed to address the mathematical complexities of modeling motion and deformation of continuum manipulators. In this study, we propose a quasistatic approach for 3D modeling and real-time simulation of a pneumatically actuated soft continuum robotic appendage to estimate the contact force and overall pose. Our model can incorporate external load at any arbitrary point on the body and deliver positional and force propagation information along the entire backbone.