A resilient robot is a robot that can recover its function after the robot is partially damaged. In this paper, a study of an under-actuated resilient robot with closed loops and passive joints is presented. First, a prototype system was built, which serves as a study vehicle and is called R-Robot II for short. Second, the kinematics of the prototype robot R-Robot II, necessarily for the change of the robot structure in, was developed. Finally, the experimentation of the R-Robot II was carried out. The result shows that the desired resilient behavior of R-Robot II can be exhibited. The architecture of R-Robot II, along with the design of the mechanical modules and simulation, was reported elsewhere. This paper focuses on the physical realization of R-Robot II and on the experimentation.

Soft robots have been a buzz word in the field of robotics. However, there are several definitions of soft robots in literature with their varying degrees of usefulness to providing guidelines for designing and constructing a soft robot. This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive definition of soft robots with the goals that the definition should be of (i) generality and (ii) practicality. By generality, it is meant that the definition gives the signature to soft robots and is all inclusive, and by practicality, it is meant that the definition provides a general guideline for practicing designers to design and construct soft robots to particular applications. A salient point in our definition of soft robots is the concept of softness, which is defined from the perspective of a receiving object - particularly as the stress and other damage quantities (e.g., deflection) created in the receiving object when the receiving object interacts with the soft system per se. A further contribution is the provision of definitions to soft sensor, soft actuator along with power generator, soft controller, and soft mechanism. Finally, research issues on soft robots are outlined.

This paper provides a critical review of tactile and thermal sensors which are built from carbon nanomaterial-filled polymer composites (CNPCs). To make the review more comprehensive and systematic, the sensors are viewed as a system, and a general knowledge architecture for a system called function-context-behavior-principle-state-structure (FCBPSS) is employed to classify information as well as knowledge related to CNPC sensors. FCBPSS contains six basic concepts, namely, F: function, C: context, B: behavior, P: principle, and SS: state and structure. As such, the principle that explains why such composites can work as temperature and pressure sensors, various structures of the CNPC sensor, which realize the principle, and the behavior and performance of CNPC sensors are discussed in this review. This review also discusses the fabrication of the CNPC sensor. Based on the critical review and analysis, the future directions of research on the CNPC sensor are discussed; in particular, the need to have a network of CNPC sensors that can be installed on curved bodies such as those of robots is elaborated.

Hexagonal braiding method has the advantages of high shape compatibility, interlacing density and high volume fraction. Based on hexagonal braiding method, a hexagonal preform was braided. Then, by following the characteristics of repeatability and concentricity of hexagonal braided preform, the printed geometry structure was got in order to understand and optimize geometric structure to make it more compact like the braided geometric structure. Finally, the unit cells were defined with hexagonal prism to analyze the micro-geometric structure of hexagonal braided preform.