Passive Phase-Oriented Impedance Shaping for Rapid Acceleration in Soft Robotic Swimmers

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.03537v1
• Date: Tue, 03 Mar 2026 21:47:02 GMT
• Title: Passive Phase-Oriented Impedance Shaping for Rapid Acceleration in Soft Robotic Swimmers
• Abstract summary: We investigate constrained-layer damping as a passive mechanism for frequency-selective impedance shaping in soft robotic swimmers.<n>We demonstrate that CLD enhances thrust and alters force--motion phase relationships across Strouhal numbers in constrained propulsion tests.<n>These results establish phase-oriented passive impedance modulation as a simple, control-free pathway for improving transient propulsion in soft robotic systems.
• Score: 1.7205106391379026
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Rapid acceleration and burst maneuvers in underwater robots depend less on maintaining precise resonance and more on force--velocity phase alignment during thrust generation. In this work, we investigate constrained-layer damping (CLD) as a passive mechanism for frequency-selective impedance shaping in soft robotic swimmers. Unlike conventional stiffness-tuning approaches, CLD selectively amplifies the dissipative component of bending impedance while preserving storage stiffness, passively shifting the impedance composition toward dissipative dominance as actuation frequency increases. We characterize this behavior through dry impedance measurements, demonstrate that CLD enhances thrust and alters force--motion phase relationships across Strouhal numbers in constrained propulsion tests, and validate that passive impedance shaping yields a nearly five-fold increase in peak acceleration and a three-fold increase in terminal velocity in unconstrained swimming trials. These results establish phase-oriented passive impedance modulation as a simple, control-free pathway for improving transient propulsion in soft robotic systems.

Related papers

• Gait-Dependent Effects on Quadruped Locomotion for Load-Carrying using Passive Mechanism [4.0534866528853195]
  This paper analyzes how passive-arm stiffness-damping selection affects payload-carrying locomotion under different gait and payload conditions.<n>We compare damped and underdamped passive-arm impedance configurations in simulation during flat-ground locomotion.<n>The results are summarized in gait-payload-stiffness-damping maps, where ZMP-margin reduction is evaluated for crawl gaits and trot is retained only as a passive-arm excitation case.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-09-10T04:05:12Z)
• Hybrid Impedance-Admittance Control with Multi-Link Aerial Robot for Contact-Rich Surface Sliding Task [5.893641589724687]
  Force-control strategies such as impedance and admittance control are commonly employed to address these requirements.<n>We propose a hybrid impedance--admittance control strategy for a multi-link aerial robot.<n> Experimental results demonstrate robust and compliant sliding performance on unknown surfaces.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-08-03T07:09:18Z)
• Frequency-Aware Flow Matching for Continuous and Consistent Robotic Action Generation [46.998628831231194]
  Existing methods rely on discretized action chunks, making them brittle to demonstrations collected at heterogeneous control.<n>We propose Frequency-Aware Flow Matching (FAFM), which outputs continuous, temporally consistent actions.<n>FAFM improves success rates, multimodal expressivity, motion smoothness, convergence speed, robustness to mechanical bias and mixed-frequency input.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-06-18T11:58:30Z)
• Learning Control as Enabling Layer for Embodied Intelligence Research explored with Soft Robotic Swimming in diverse Flow Speeds [0.0]
  We evaluate whether augmenting PID control with a Linear Repetitive Learning Estimation Scheme (PID-LRLES) recovers tracking accuracy and repeatability under dynamic flow.<n>The LRLES generalizes classical integral action from constant to periodic, non-constant references, while using a stable transfer-function realization.<n>This approach provides an enabling layer for future robophysical studies seeking to isolate the effects of morphology, sensing, and environmental flow on aquatic locomotion.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-06-09T15:20:13Z)
• Variable Aerodynamic Damping via Co-Contraction: A Dynamic Isomorphism with Variable Stiffness Actuators [3.919116384604024]
  We prove that aerodynamic co-contraction in a redundant dual-rotor actuator can tune a passive, trim-defined aero-mechanical damping.<n>The same fiber-density principle also enhances the active aerodynamic promptness measure of redundant multirotors.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-05-08T06:02:34Z)
• Flux-Activated Resonant Control of a Bosonic Quantum Memory [63.35373457838474]
  Bosonic circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) coherently control long-lived superconducting cavities.<n>We integrate an on-chip flux-control architecture with a long-lived bosonic memory housed in a 3D superconducting cavity.<n>We realize efficient arbitrary rotations between any pair of Fock levels in the memory.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-02-20T10:22:53Z)
• Hypersonic Flow Control: Generalized Deep Reinforcement Learning for Hypersonic Intake Unstart Control under Uncertainty [0.34376560669160394]
  Unstart is a major challenge to reliable air-breathing propulsion at Mach 5 and above.<n>We show a strategy to control unstart in a canonical two-dimensional hypersonic inlet at Mach 5 and Reynolds number $5times 106$.<n>Results establish a data-driven approach for real-time hypersonic flow control under realistic operational uncertainties.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-01-27T22:38:52Z)
• RAPID^3: Tri-Level Reinforced Acceleration Policies for Diffusion Transformer [86.57077884971478]
  Diffusion Transformers (DiTs) excel at visual generation yet remain hampered by slow sampling.<n>We introduce RAPID3: Tri-Level Reinforced Acceleration Policies for Diffusion Transformers.<n>It delivers image-wise acceleration with zero updates to the base generator.<n>It achieves nearly 3x faster sampling with competitive generation quality.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-09-26T13:20:52Z)
• Fault-tolerant dynamically-decoupled hyper-Ramsey spectroscopy of ultra-narrow clock transitions [0.0]
  Hyper-Ramsey protocols effectively reduce AC-Stark shifts in probing ultra-narrow optical clock transitions.<n>We address these limitations by incorporating dynamical decoupling.<n>Fault-tolerant dynamically-decoupled SU(2) hyper-clocks are a significant step toward universal, noise-resilient quantum sensors.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-06-29T05:12:04Z)
• Dissipating quartets of excitations in a superconducting circuit [0.0]
  In this work, we leverage a genuine six-wave mixing process enabled by a near Kerr-free Josephson element to enforce dissipation of quartets of excitations in a superconducting resonator.<n>We show an order of magnitude enhancement of the state decay rate while only marginally impacting the relaxation and coherence of lower energy states.<n>These results pave the way toward the dynamical stabilization of four-component Schr"odinger cat qubits and even more complex bosonic qubits.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-01-10T13:40:51Z)
• Acceleration-induced transport of quantum vortices in joined atomtronic circuits [0.0]
  We investigate how acceleration influences the transfer of persistent currents between two density-connected, ring-shaped atomic Bose-Einstein condensates.<n>We find that the acceleration modifies both the density and phase dynamics between the rings, leading to a bias in the periodic vortex oscillations.<n>We analyze how this transfer depends on the weak-link amplitude, the initial persistent current configuration, and the acceleration strength and direction.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-10-31T11:02:10Z)
• EMDM: Efficient Motion Diffusion Model for Fast and High-Quality Motion Generation [57.539634387672656]
  Current state-of-the-art generative diffusion models have produced impressive results but struggle to achieve fast generation without sacrificing quality. We introduce Efficient Motion Diffusion Model (EMDM) for fast and high-quality human motion generation.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-12-04T18:58:38Z)
• Process tomography of Robust Dynamical Decoupling in Superconducting Qubits [91.3755431537592]
  The Rigetti quantum computing platform was used to test different dynamical decoupling sequences. The performance of the sequences was characterized by Quantum Process Tomography and analyzed using the quantum channels formalism.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-06-18T14:48:18Z)
• Hessian-Free High-Resolution Nesterov Acceleration for Sampling [55.498092486970364]
  Nesterov's Accelerated Gradient (NAG) for optimization has better performance than its continuous time limit (noiseless kinetic Langevin) when a finite step-size is employed. This work explores the sampling counterpart of this phenonemon and proposes a diffusion process, whose discretizations can yield accelerated gradient-based MCMC methods.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-06-16T15:07:37Z)
• Switching dynamics of single and coupled VO2-based oscillators as elements of neural networks [55.41644538483948]
  We report on the switching dynamics of both single and coupled VO2-based oscillators, with resistive and capacitive coupling, and explore the capability of their application in neural networks. For the resistive coupling, it is shown that synchronization takes place at a certain value of the coupling resistance, though it is unstable and a synchronization failure occurs periodically. For the capacitive coupling, two synchronization modes, with weak and strong coupling, are found. The transition between these modes is accompanied by chaotic oscillations.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-01-07T02:16:04Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.