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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…

While most insect-inspired robots come with a simple tarsus such as a hemispherical foot tip, insect legs have complex tarsal structures and claws, which enable them to walk on complex terrain. Their sharp claws can smoothly attach and…

Most legged robots are built with leg structures from serially mounted links and actuators and are controlled through complex controllers and sensor feedback. In comparison, animals developed multi-segment legs, mechanical coupling between…

Most locomotion methods for humanoid robots focus on leg-based gaits, yet natural bipeds frequently rely on hands, knees, and elbows to establish additional contacts for stability and support in complex environments. This paper introduces…

In this paper, we focus on the kangaroo, which has powerful legs capable of jumping and a soft and strong tail. To incorporate these unique structure into a robot for utilization, we propose a design method that takes into account both the…

Nature suggests that exploiting the elasticities and natural dynamics of robotic systems could increase their locomotion efficiency. Prior work on elastic snake robots supports this hypothesis, but has not fully exploited the nonlinear…

Legged robots are well-suited for broad exploration tasks in complex environments with yielding terrain. Understanding robotic foot-terrain interactions is critical for safe locomotion and walking efficiency for legged robots. This paper…

Granular materials such as sand, powders, and grains are omnipresent in daily life, industrial applications, and earth-science [1]. When unperturbed, they form stable structures that resemble the ones of other amorphous solids like metallic…

Humans typically walk at low speeds and run at higher speeds. Previous studies of transitions between walking and running were mostly on treadmills, but real-world locomotion allows more flexibility. Here, we study overground locomotion…

Sand is a highly dissipative system, where the local spatial arrangements and densities depend strongly on the applied forces, resulting in fluid-like or solid-like behaviour. This makes sand swimming challenging and intriguing, raising…

During fast locomotion - gallop, half bound - of quadruped mammals, the ground contact of the limbs in each pair do not alternate symmetrically. Animals using such asymmetrical gait thus choose whether the left or the right limb will…

We study a simple model of a foraging animal that modifies the substrate on which it moves. This substrate provides its only resource, and the forager manage it by taking a limited portion at each visited site. The resource recovers its…

Much of the Earth and many surfaces of extraterrestrial bodies are composed of in-cohesive particle matter. Locomoting on granular terrain is challenging for common robotic devices, either wheeled or legged. In this work, we discover a…

Granular materials such as sand, powders, foams etc. are ubiquitous in our daily life, as well as in industrial and geotechnical applications. Although these disordered systems form stable structures if unperturbed, in practice they do…

This fluid dynamics video demonstrates the capabilities of an experimental setup to visualize organisms burrowing in granular substrates. The setup consists of a tank filled with 1mm soda-lime glass beads, backlit by halogen lights. The…

For humans, fast, efficient walking over flat ground represents the vast majority of locomotion that an individual experiences on a daily basis, and for an effective, real-world humanoid robot the same will likely be the case. In this work,…

Terrestrial animals often must self-right from an upside-down orientation on the ground to survive. Here, we compared self-righting strategies of the Madagascar hissing, American, and discoid cockroaches on a challenging flat, rigid,…

In this theoretical study, we present an analytical framework to investigate the slithering motion of snakes on flat surfaces. While previous studies have predominantly relied on numerical methods to identify optimal locomotion kinematics,…

Legged robots have the potential to leverage obstacles to climb steep sand slopes. However, efficiently repositioning these obstacles to desired locations is challenging. Here we present DiffusiveGRAIN, a learning-based method that enables…

Legged robots need to be capable of walking on diverse terrain conditions. In this paper, we present a novel reinforcement learning framework for learning locomotion on non-rigid dynamic terrains. Specifically, our framework can generate…