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Terrestrial locomotion requires generating appropriate ground reaction forces which depend on substrate geometry and physical properties. The richness of positions and orientations of terrain features in the 3-D world gives limbless animals…
Consider a stochastic process that behaves as a $d$-dimensional simple and symmetric random walk, except that, with a certain fixed probability, at each step, it chooses instead to jump to a given site with probability proportional to the…
Rather than using wooden sticks to simulate the breakage of trees in high winds as in most research, we employed fresh samples with branches and leaves to certify the crucial role played by the tree crown. By using the blowdown wind tunnel…
Being widespread in human motor behavior, dynamic movements demonstrate higher efficiency and greater capacity to address a broader range of skill domains compared to their quasi-static counterparts. Among the frequently studied dynamic…
Jumping can be an effective way of locomotion to overcome small terrain gaps or obstacles. In this paper we propose two different approaches to perform jumps with a humanoid robot. Specifically, starting from a pre-defined CoM trajectory we…
In table tennis, the rotation (spin) of the ball plays a crucial role. A table tennis match will feature a variety of strokes. Each generates different amounts and types of spin. To develop a robot that can compete with a human player, the…
We consider the rope climber fall problem in two different settings. The simplest formulation of the problem is when the climber falls from a given altitude and is attached to one end of the rope while the other end of the rope is attached…
Frictional sliding is an intrinsically complex phenomenon, emerging from the interplay between driving forces, elasto-frictional instabilities, interfacial nonlinearity and dissipation, material inertia and bulk geometry. We show that…
Animals run robustly in diverse terrain. This locomotion robustness is puzzling because axon conduction velocity is limited to a few ten meters per second. If reflex loops deliver sensory information with significant delays, one would…
Despite advances in a diversity of environments, snake robots are still far behind snakes in traversing complex 3-D terrain with large obstacles. This is due to a lack of understanding of how to control 3-D body bending to push against…
Achieving controlled jumping behaviour for a quadruped robot is a challenging task, especially when introducing passive compliance in mechanical design. This study addresses this challenge via imitation-based deep reinforcement learning…
We calculate exactly the modes of motion of the Time-averaged Orbiting Potential (TOP) trap with its four degrees of freedom, namely the three translations and the spin, taken into account. We find that, when gravity is neglected, there are…
Legged robots are being used to explore rough terrains as they are capable of traversing gaps and obstacles. In this paper, a new mechanism is designed to replicate a robotic lizard using integrated five-bar mechanisms. There are two five…
We study vertical jumping in a simple robot comprising an actuated mass-spring arrangement. The actuator frequency and phase are systematically varied to find optimal performance. Optimal jumps occur above and below (but not at) the robot's…
The potential of Martian lava tubes for resource extraction and habitat sheltering highlights the need for robots capable to undertake the grueling task of their exploration. Driven by this motivation, in this work we introduce a legged…
The rodwheel is a wheel equipped with a rod motorized on the axle. This paper proposes a Lagrangian approach to find the state equations of the rodwheel rolling on a plane without friction. The approach takes advantage of a symbolic…
Selectively picking a target fruit surrounded by obstacles is one of the major challenges for fruit harvesting robots. Different from traditional obstacle avoidance methods, this paper presents an active obstacle separation strategy that…
We consider a biased nearest-neighbor random walk on $\Z$ which at each step is trapped for some random time with random, site-dependent mean. We derive a simple formula for the speed function in terms of the model parameters.
Hyper-redundant tendon-driven manipulators offer greater flexibility and compliance over traditional manipulators. A common way of controlling such manipulators relies on adjusting tendon lengths, which is an accessible control parameter.…
When a big and heavy robot moves, it exerts large forces on the environment and on its own structure, its angular momentum can varysubstantially, and even the robot's structure can deform if there is a mechanical weakness. Under these…