Robotics: Science and Systems XXII

Damage Adaptation in Seconds for Architected Materials

James Avtges, Jake B. Ketchum, Helena Young, Taekyoung Kim, Ryan L. Truby, Todd Murphey

Abstract:

Adaptation to damages and in-situ physical repairs is essential for long-term robot autonomy, yet challenging outside of narrowly defined and well-anticipated bounds. In this work we proprioceptively adapt to catastrophic damage in soft-actuated systems in under one minute. Architected materials are well equipped for adaptation: actuator failure occurs gradually rather than acutely, and damage can be described in a low-dimensional, discrete coordinate space. Surprisingly, latent damage representations plus a simple yet robust ensemble method is sufficient for adapting to unseen damage in real-time. We demonstrate LEAP, our method for adaptive proprioception, via a tracing task for a 6DoF soft wrist based on Handed Shearing Auxetic (HSA) actuators. Our algorithm is able to adapt to cuts, burns, and actuator repairs, enabling simulation-free real-time adaptation that is critical for realizing the promise of soft robots outside the lab.

Download:

Bibtex:

  
@INPROCEEDINGS{AvtgesJ-RSS-26, 
    AUTHOR    = {James Avtges AND Jake B. Ketchum AND Helena Young AND Taekyoung Kim AND Ryan L. Truby AND Todd Murphey}, 
    TITLE     = {{Damage Adaptation in Seconds for Architected Materials}}, 
    BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems}, 
    YEAR      = {2026}, 
    ADDRESS   = {Sydney, Australia}, 
    MONTH     = {July}, 
    DOI       = {10.15607/RSS.2026.XXII.158} 
}