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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…
Soft porous materials, such as biological tissues and soils, are exposed to periodic deformations in a variety of natural and industrial contexts. The detailed flow and mechanics of these deformations have not yet been systematically…
Confined granular fluids, placed in a shallow box that is vibrated vertically, can achieve homogeneous stationary states thanks to energy injection mechanisms that take place throughout the system. These states can be stable even at high…
We report on a series of experiments in which a grain-sized intruder is pushed by a spring through a 2D granular material comprised of photoelastic disks in a Couette geometry. We study the intruder dynamics as a function of packing…
We perform an experimental study of granular impact, where intruders strike 2D beds of photoelastic disks from above. High-speed video captures the intruder dynamics and the local granular force response, allowing investigation of…
We report in experiment and simulation the spontaneous formation of dynamically bound pairs of shape changing smarticle robots undergoing locally repulsive collisions. Borrowing terminology from Conway's simulated Game of Life, these…
Granular packings display a wealth of mechanical features which are of widespread significance. One of these features is creep: the slow deformation under applied stress. Creep is common for many other amorphous materials such as many…
We study the compaction and mobility properties of a dense granular material under weak random vibration. By putting in direct contact millimetric glass beads with piezoelectric transducers we manage to inject energy to the system in a…
The paper considers rotations at different scales in granular materials: the rotations of individual particles, the rolling and rigid-rotation of particle pairs, the rotational interactions of a particle within its cluster of neighbors, and…
Robophysics investigates the physical principles that govern living-like robots operating in complex, realworld environments. Despite remarkable technological advances, robots continue to face fundamental efficiency limitations. At the…
Experimental investigations of surface forces generally involve two solid bodies of simple and well-defined geometry interacting across a medium. Direct measurement of their surface interaction can be interpreted to reveal fundamental…
Soft robotics is advancing the use of flexible materials for adaptable robotic systems. Membrane-actuated soft robots address the limitations of traditional soft robots by using pressurized, extensible membranes to achieve stable, large…
The functional demands of robotic systems often require completing various tasks or behaviors under the effect of disturbances or uncertain environments. Of increasing interest is the autonomy for dynamic robots, such as multirotors, motor…
The development of versatile robots capable of traversing challenging and irregular environments is of increasing interest in the field of robotics, and metameric robots have been identified as a promising solution due to their slender,…
We investigate the dynamics of a magnetoelastic robot with a dipolar magnetic head and a slender elastic body as it performs undulatory strokes and burrows through water-saturated granular beds. The robot is actuated by an oscillating…
Rigid-bodied robots often lack compliance needed to adapt to unstructured environments, while fully soft robots, though highly adaptable, struggle with scalability and load capacity. In nature, musculoskeletal systems balance strength and…
Analyses of impact provide rich insights from the evolution of granular bodies to their structural properties of the surface and subsurface layers of celestial bodies. Although chemical cohesive bonding has been observed in asteroid…
Robots often interact with the world via attached parts such as wheels, joints, or appendages. In many systems, these interactions, and the manner in which they lead to locomotion, can be understood using the machinery of geometric…
Flow-induced failure of granular materials is relevant to a broad range of geomechanical applications. Plasticity, which is the inherent failure mechanism of most granular materials, enables large deformations that can invalidate linearised…
Many animals, modern aircraft, and underwater vehicles use streamlined body shapes that reduce fluid dynamic drag to achieve fast and effective locomotion in air and water. Similarly, numerous small terrestrial animals move through…