Misra, Shivangi
Email Address
ORCID
Disciplines
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
Publication A Tendon-Driven Origami Hopper Triggered by Proprioceptive Contact Detection(2020-04-06) Chen, Wei-Hsi; Misra, Shivangi; Caporale, J. Diego; Yang, Shu; Sung, Cynthia R.; Koditschek, Daniel EWe report on experiments with a laptop-sized (0.23m, 2.53kg), paper origami robot that exhibits highly dynamic and stable two degree-of-freedom (circular boom) hopping at speeds in excess of 1.5 bl/s (body-lengths per second) at a specific resistance O(1) while achieving aerial phase apex states 25% above the stance height over thousands of cycles. Three conventional brushless DC motors load energy into the folded paper springs through pulley-borne cables whose sudden loss of tension upon touchdown triggers the release of spring potential that accelerates the body back through liftoff to flight with a 20W powerstroke, whereupon the toe angle is adjusted to regulate fore-aft speed. We also demonstrate in the vertical hopping mode the transparency of this actuation scheme by using proprioceptive contact detection with only motor encoder sensing. The combination of actuation and sensing shows potential to lower system complexity for tendon-driven robots. For more information: Kod*lab (link to kodlab.seas.upenn.edu)Publication Design and Control of a Tunable-Stiffness Coiled-Spring Actuator(2023-05-29) Misra, Shivangi; Mitchell, Mason; Chen, Rongqian; Sung, CynthiaWe propose a novel design for a lightweight and compact tunable stiffness actuator capable of stiffness changes up to 20x. The design is based on the concept of a coiled spring, where changes in the number of layers in the spring change the bulk stiffness in a near-linear fashion. We present an elastica nested rings model for the deformation of the proposed actuator and empirically verify that the designed stiffness-changing spring abides by this model. Using the resulting model, we design a physical prototype of the tunable-stiffness coiled-spring actuator and discuss the effect of design choices on the resulting achievable stiffness range and resolution. In the future, this actuator design could be useful in a wide variety of soft robotics applications, where fast, controllable, and local stiffness change is required over a large range of stiffnesses.Publication Forward Kinematics and Control of a Segmented Tunable-Stiffness 3-D Continuum Manipulator(2022-01-01) Misra, Shivangi; Sung, CynthiaIn this work, we consider the problem of controlling the end effector position of a continuum manipulator through local stiffness changes. Continuum manipulators offer the advantage of continuous deformation along their lengths, and recent advances in smart material actuators further enable local compliance changes, which can affect the manipulator's bulk motion. However, leveraging local stiffness change to control motion remains lightly explored. We build a kinematic model of a continuum manipulator as a sequence of segments consisting of symmetrically arranged springs around the perimeter of every segment, and we show that this system has a closed form solution to its forward kinematics. The model includes common constraints such as restriction of torsional or shearing movement. Based on this model, we propose a controller on the spring stiffnesses for a single segment and provide provable guarantees on convergence to a desired goal position. The results are verified in simulation and compared to physical hardware.Publication A Programmably Compliant Origami Mechanism for Dynamically Dexterous Robots(2020-01-09) Chen, Wei-Hsi; Mishra, Shivangi; Gao, Yuchong; Lee, Young-Joo; Yang, Shu; Sung, Cynthia R.; Koditschek, Daniel EWe present an approach to overcoming challenges in dynamical dexterity for robots through programmably compliant origami mechanisms. Our work leverages a one-parameter family of flat sheet crease patterns that folds into origami bellows, whose axial compliance can be tuned to select desired stiffness. Concentrically arranged cylinder pairs reliably manifest additive stiffness, extending the programmable range by nearly an order of magnitude and achieving bulk axial stiffness spanning 200–1500 N/m using 8 mil thick polyester-coated paper. Accordingly, we design origami energy-storing springs with a stiffness of 1035 N/m each and incorporate them into a three degree-of-freedom (DOF) tendon-driven spatial pointing mechanism that exhibits trajectory tracking accuracy less than 15% rms error within a (2 cm)^3 volume. The origami springs can sustain high power throughput, enabling the robot to achieve asymptotically stable juggling for both highly elastic (1 kg resilient shotput ball) and highly damped (“medicine ball”) collisions in the vertical direction with apex heights approaching 10 cm. The results demonstrate that “soft” robotic mechanisms are able to perform a controlled, dynamically actuated task.Publication Online Optimization of Soft Manipulator Mechanics via Hierarchical Control(2024) Misra, Shivangi; Sung, CynthiaActively tuning mechanical properties in soft robots is now feasible due to advancements in soft actuation technologies. In soft manipulators, these novel actuators can be distributed over the robot body to allow greater control over its large number of degrees of freedom and to stabilize local deformations against a range of disturbances. In this paper, we present a hierarchical policy for stiffness control for such a class of soft manipulators. The stiffness changes induce desired deformations in each segment, thereby influencing the manipulator’s end-effector position. The algorithm can be run as an online controller to influence the manipulator’s stable states – as we demonstrate in simulation – or offline as a design algorithm to optimize stiffness distributions – as we showcase in a hardware demonstration. Our proposed hierarchical control scheme is agnostic to the stiffness actuation method and can extend to other soft manipulators with nonuniform stiffness distributions.