With the rapid rise of 3D-printing as a competitive mass manufacturing method, manual "decaking" - i.e. removing the residual powder that sticks to a 3D-printed part - has become a significant bottleneck. Here, we introduce, for the first time to our knowledge, a robotic system for automated decaking of 3D-printed parts. Combining Deep Learning for 3D perception, smart mechanical design, motion planning, and force control for industrial robots, we developed a system that can automatically decake parts in a fast and efficient way. Through a series of decaking experiments performed on parts printed by a Multi Jet Fusion printer, we demonstrated the feasibility of robotic decaking for 3D-printing-based mass manufacturing.
Singapore Centre for 3D Printing（新加坡3D打印中心）；Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）
Building and Construction have recently become an exciting application ground for robotics. In particular, rapid progress in materials formulation and in robotics technology has made robotic 3D Printing of concrete a promising technique for in-situ construction. Yet, scalability remains an important hurdle to widespread adoption: the printing systems (gantry- based or arm-based) are often much larger than the structure to be printed, hence cumbersome. Recently, a mobile printing system - a manipulator mounted on a mobile base - was proposed to alleviate this issue: such a system, by moving its…
Impressive animal locomotion capabilities are mediated by the co-evolution of the skeletal morphology and muscular properties. Legged robot performance would also likely benefit from the co-optimization of actuators and leg morphology. However, development of custom actuators for legged robots is often expensive and time consuming, which discourages roboticists from pursuing performance gains afforded by application-specific actuator optimization. This paper presents open-source designs for two quasi-direct-drive actuators with performance regimes appropriate for an 8--15 kg robot, built compl…
Model to Model: Understanding the Venus Flytrap Snapping Mechanism and Transferring it to a 3D-printed Bistable Soft Robotic Demonstrator
Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies（弗赖堡交互式材料与生物启发技术中心）；University of Freiburg（弗赖堡大学）；Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）；Harvard University（哈佛大学）
研究通过分析捕蝇草的 snapping 机制，设计并制作了两个 3D 打印的双稳软机器人演示器，用于模仿捕蝇草的闭合行为。
M3D-skin: Multi-material 3D-printed Tactile Sensor with Hierarchical Infill Structures for Pressure Sensing
Department of Mechano-Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo（机械信息学系，信息科学和技术研究生院，东京大学）；AI Center, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo（人工智能中心，信息科学和技术研究生院，东京大学）
A Biomimetic Fingerprint for Robotic Tactile Sensing
Faculty of Mechatronic \& Micro-Mechatronic Systems Hochschule Karlsruhe (HKA) Karlsruhe, Germany；Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH；L3S Research Center, Leibniz Universität Hannover Hannover, Germany
Tactile SoftHand-A: 3D-Printed, Tactile, Highly-underactuated, Anthropomorphic Robot Hand with an Antagonistic Tendon Mechanism
School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology（工程数学与技术学院）；Bristol Robotics Laboratory（布里斯托尔机器人实验室）；University of Bristol（布里斯托尔大学）；School of Robotics（机器人学院）；Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University（西安交通大学利物浦大学）；Department of Information Engineering（信息工程系）；Research Center "E.Piaggio"（E.Piaggio研究中心）；University of Pisa（比萨大学）；Soft Robotics for Human Cooperation and Rehabilitation（人机合作与康复软机器人）；Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia（意大利技术研究院）
This paper presents the initial development of a robotic additive manufacturing technology based on ultraviolet (UV)-curable thermoset polymers. This is designed to allow free-standing printing through partial UV curing and fiber reinforcement for structural applications. The proposed system integrates a collaborative robotic manipulator with a custom-built extruder end-effector designed specifically for printing with UV-curable polymers. The system was tested using a variety of resin compositions, some reinforced with milled glass fiber (GF) or fumed silica (FS) and small-scale, 2D and 3D spe…
RAMP: A Benchmark for Evaluating Robotic Assembly Manipulation and Planning
Birmingham University（伯明翰大学）；The Manufacturing Technology Centre（制造技术中心）；Applied AI Lab, Oxford Robotics Institute, University of Oxford（牛津大学牛津机器人研究所应用人工智能实验室）
Autonomous Elemental Characterization Enabled by a Low Cost Robotic Platform Built Upon a Generalized Software Architecture
Energy Geosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（能源地球科学部，劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室）；Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（材料科学部，劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室）
Imperial College London（帝国理工学院）；Microsoft Research（微软研究院）
The common layer-by-layer deposition of regular, 3-axis 3D printing simplifies both the fabrication process and the 3D printer's mechanical design. However, the resulting 3D printed objects have some unfavourable characteristics including visible layers, uneven structural strength and support material. To overcome these, researchers have employed robotic arms and multi-axis CNCs to deposit materials in conformal layers. Conformal deposition improves the quality of the 3D printed parts through support-less printing and curved layer deposition. However, such multi-axis 3D printing is inaccessibl…
A Novel Bioinspired Neuromorphic Vision-based Tactile Sensor for Fast Tactile Perception
Khalifa University（哈利法大学）；University of Lincoln（林肯大学）；Khalifa University Center of Autonomous Robotic Systems (KUCARS)（哈利法大学自主机器人系统中心）；Healthcare Engineering and Innovation Group (HEIG)（医疗保健工程与创新集团）；Advanced Research and Innovation Center (ARIC)（先进研究与创新中心）
Rotational Multi-material 3D Printing of Soft Robotic Matter with Asymmetrical Embedded Pneumatics
John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University（哈佛大学约翰·A·保尔森工程与应用科学学院）；Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University（斯坦福大学机械工程系）；Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University（哈佛大学威斯生物启发工程研究所）
Meta-learning enhanced adaptive robot control strategy for automated PCB assembly
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology（卡尔斯鲁厄理工学院）；Engineer School（工程师学院）；New York University（纽约大学）；Department of Electronic Engineering（电子工程系）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）
Georgia Institute of Technology（佐治亚理工学院）；Stanford University（斯坦福大学）
We explore the problem of estimating the mass distribution of an articulated object by an interactive robotic agent. Our method predicts the mass distribution of an object by using the limited sensing and actuating capabilities of a robotic agent that is interacting with the object. We are inspired by the role of exploratory play in human infants. We take the combined approach of supervised and reinforcement learning to train an agent that learns to strategically interact with the object to estimate the object's mass distribution. Our method consists of two neural networks: (i) the policy netw…
Design and Development of a Modular Bucket Drum Excavator for Lunar ISRU
Faculty of Aerospace Engineering and Geodesy, University of Stuttgart（航空航天工程与大地测量学系，斯图加特大学）；Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University（工学研究科，东北大学）
