Soft Robotics Lab Project Pages

A list of SRL project websites.

Our Projects with Websites

  1. A Benchmark of Dexterity for Anthropomorphic Robotic Hands

    Preprint (arXiv), 2026

    Davide Liconti*, Yuning Zhou*, Yasunori Toshimitsu, Ronan Hinchet, Robert K. Katzschmann

    POMDAR is a taxonomy-grounded dexterity benchmark for anthropomorphic hands, measuring task throughput across grasping and manipulation configurations in real and simulated settings.

    *Equal contribution

  2. Simple Models, Real Swimming: Digital Twins for Tendon-Driven Underwater Robots

    Preprint (arXiv), 2026

    Mike Yan Michelis, Nana Obayashi, et al.

    Digital twins for tendon-driven underwater robots, validating simple models with real-world swimming behavior.

  3. SERNF: Sample-Efficient Real-World Dexterous Policy Fine-Tuning via Action-Chunked Critics and Normalizing Flows

    Preprint (arXiv), 2026

    Chenyu Yang*, Denis Tarasov*, et al.

    Sample-efficient real-world dexterous policy fine-tuning with action-chunked critics and normalizing flows.

    *Equal contribution

  4. SORS: A Modular, High-Fidelity Simulator for Soft Robots

    IEEE RoboSoft, 2026

    Manuel Mekkattu*, Mike Yan Michelis*, et al.

    A modular, high-fidelity simulation framework for soft robots focused on contact-rich manipulation and sim-to-real transfer.

    *Equal contribution

  5. Latent Action Diffusion for Cross-Embodiment Manipulation

    IEEE ICRA, 2026

    Erik Bauer, Elvis Nava, Robert K. Katzschmann

    Latent action diffusion for cross-embodiment skill transfer and single-policy multi-robot manipulation control.

  6. VQ-ACE: Efficient Policy Search for Dexterous Robotic Manipulation via Action Chunking Embedding

    Preprint (arXiv), 2024

    Chenyu Yang*, Davide Liconti*, et al.

    Vector-quantized action chunk embeddings for efficient policy search in dexterous manipulation with MPC and reinforcement learning.

    *Equal contribution

  7. Sensorized Soft Skin for Dexterous Robotic Hands

    IEEE ICRA, 2024

    Jana Egli, Benedek Forrai, et al.

    Sensorized soft skin for high-resolution tactile perception in soft robotics.

  8. Sim-to-Real of Soft Robots with Learned Residual Physics

    IEEE RA-L, 2024

    Junpeng Gao*, Mike Yan Michelis*, et al.

    Hybrid sim-to-real modeling for soft robots that augments analytical simulation with learned residual physics.

    *Equal contribution

  9. ORCA: An Open-Source, Reliable, Cost-Effective, Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand for Uninterrupted Dexterous Task Learning

    IEEE IROS, 2024

    Clemens C. Christoph, Maximilian Eberlein, Filippos Katsimalis, Arturo Roberti, Aristotelis Sympetheros, Michel R. Vogt, Davide Liconti, Chenyu Yang, Barnabas Gavin Cangan, Ronan J. Hinchet, Robert K. Katzschmann

    Open source Robotic Hand.

  10. Getting the Ball Rolling: Learning a Dexterous Policy for a Biomimetic Tendon-Driven Hand with Rolling Contact Joints

    IEEE-RAS Humanoids, 2023

    Yasunori Toshimitsu, Benedek Forrai, et al.

    Adaptive dexterous manipulation for ball rolling tasks with soft robotic systems.

  11. Vision-controlled jetting for composite systems and robots

    Nature, 2023

    Thomas J. K. Buchner, Simon Rogler, et al.

    Vision-driven control and optimization for ink-jet based manufacturing.