RESEARCH

AUXETIC GEOMETRIES

Soft, inflatable actuator based on auxetic geometry
Materials and structures are considered to be auxetic when the exhibit negative Poisson’s ratio behaviour — i.e. expand (or contract) in orthogonal directions when stretched (or compressed). This property has useful implications in soft robotics, both for shape design and shock absorption.

Sedal, A., et al. “Design of Deployable Soft Robots through Plastic Deformation of Kirigami Structures.” IEEE Robotics & Automation Letters (RA-L), 2020. doi: 10.1109/LRA.2020.2970943

Sedal, A., et al. & Kota, S. “Auxetic Sleeves for Soft Actuators with Kinematically Varied Surfaces.” IEEE Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2018. doi:10.1109/IROS.2018.8594212/

SIM TO REAL

Simulated and real crawling soft robot
Roboticists can accelerate design and testing using simulations before deploying prototypes in the real world. Due to their nonlinear and highly deformable morphologies, soft robots are especially difficult to simulate. Our group researches ways to reduce this "sim-to-real" gap in the context of soft robot learning.

Schaff, C.B. et al. "Soft Robots Learn to Crawl: Jointly Optimizing Design and Control with Sim-to-Real Transfer." Robotics: Science and Systems, 2022.

BIODEGRADABLE ROBOTS

Scanning Electron Microscope images sof biodegradabe tough hydrogels
Our group is developing biodegradable, functional materials based on hydrogels for soft robots that are more environmentally friendly.

MECHANICAL MODELS

Inflatable soft actuators
Our group builds physics-based models for soft robotic actuators. Mechanical models capture underlying physical principles of material kinematics, elastic asymmetry, and time-dependent damping to predict how soft robots will behave under different conditions. These models enable us to gain a deeper understanding of soft robots and design effective control strategies for a wide range of applications.

Sedal, A., Wineman, A., “Force reversal and energy dissipation in composite tubes through nonlinear viscoelasticity of component materials.” Proc. Royal. Soc. A, 2020. doi:10.1098/rspa.2020.0299

Sedal, A., et al. “Comparison and Experimental Validation of Predictive Models for Soft, Fiber-Reinforced Actuators.” International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2019. doi:10.1177/0278364919879493

Sedal, A., et al. “A Continuum Model for Fiber-Reinforced Soft Robot Actuators.” ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, 10(2), 2018. doi:10.1115/1.4039101.

PEOPLE

Audrey Sedal

Audrey Sedal

Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Wilfred Mason

Wilfred Mason

MSc Student

Portia Rayner

Portia Rayner

MSc Student (co-advised by Prof. Jianyu Li)

Shiyao Ni

Shiyao Ni

B Eng Thesis Student

Godswill Agbofode

Godswill Agbofode

B Eng Thesis Student

Lab alumni: Anjali Jindal BEng '24, David Brenken B Eng '23
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