Systems designed for marine and underwater environments face special challenges for real-world adoption. We study how the fluid dynamics of operating underwater changes dexterous manipulation, and test novel robotic mechanisms in the field.
Enhanced grasping with fingertip suction flow
Publications:
The Ocean One hands: An adaptive design for robust marine manipulation
Tunable Contact Conditions and Grasp Hydrodynamics Using Gentle Fingertip Suction
Tactile sensing based on fingertip suction flow for submerged dexterous manipulation
Suction helps in a pinch: Improving underwater manipulation with gentle suction flow
A compliant underactuated hand with suction flow for underwater mobile manipulation
Sampling coral reefs
Another thrust is the design of devices for sampling deep coral reefs. These fragile ecosystems are not well understood, and we aim to enable human-portable ROV’s to perform meaningful tests at depth.
Publications: