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Climbing robots face significant challenges when navigating unstructured environments, where reliable attachment to irregular surfaces is critical. We present a novel mobile climbing robot equipped with compliant pin-array structured…
Environments with large terrain height variations present great challenges for legged robot locomotion. Drawing inspiration from fire ants' collective assembly behavior, we study strategies that can enable two ``connectable'' robots to…
Wheeled ground robots are limited from exploring extreme environments such as caves, lava tubes and skylights. Small robots that can utilize unconventional mobility through hopping, flying or rolling can overcome these limitations.…
With the real need of field exploration in large-scale and extreme outdoor environments, cooperative exploration tasks have garnered increasing attention. This paper presents a comprehensive review of multi-robot cooperative exploration…
This work contributes a marsupial robotic system-of-systems involving a legged and an aerial robot capable of collaborative mapping and exploration path planning that exploits the heterogeneous properties of the two systems and the ability…
The interest in exploring planetary bodies for scientific investigation and in-situ resource utilization is ever-rising. Yet, many sites of interest are inaccessible to state-of-the-art planetary exploration robots because of the robots'…
Climbing robots hold significant promise for applications such as industrial inspection and maintenance, particularly in hazardous or hard-to-reach environments. This paper describes the quadrupedal climbing robot Magnecko, developed with…
The growing global demand for critical raw materials (CRMs) has highlighted the need to access difficult and hazardous environments such as abandoned underground mines. These sites pose significant challenges for conventional machinery and…
Designing an in-pipe climbing robot that manipulates sharp gears to study complex line relationships. Traditional rolling/happening pipe climbing robots tend to slide when exploring pipe curves. The proposed gearbox connects to the farthest…
Climbing Robots are being developed for applications ranging from cleaning to the inspection of difficult to reach constructions. Climbing robots should be capable of carrying a light payload and climbing on vertical surfaces with ability…
Legged rovers provide enhanced mobility compared to wheeled platforms, enabling navigation on steep and irregular planetary terrains. However, traditional legged locomotion might be energetically inefficient and potentially dangerous to the…
Navigating unknown three-dimensional (3D) rugged environments is challenging for multi-robot systems. Traditional discrete systems struggle with rough terrain due to limited individual mobility, while modular systems--where rigid,…
Blueprint of an in-pipe climbing robot that works with sharp transmissions to study complex line relationships. Standard wheeled/happening pipe climbing robots tend to slide when exploring pipe turns. Instruments help achieve a very…
This paper develops a communication-efficient distributed mapping approach for rapid exploration of a cave by a multi-robot team. Subsurface planetary exploration is an unsolved problem challenged by communication, power, and compute…
Exploration of extreme or remote environments such as Mars is often recognized as an opportunity for multi-robot systems. However, this poses challenges for maintaining robust inter-robot communication without preexisting infrastructure. It…
Quadruped robots are currently a widespread platform for robotics research, thanks to powerful Reinforcement Learning controllers and the availability of cheap and robust commercial platforms. However, to broaden the adoption of the…
In recent years, robotic exploration has become increasingly important in planetary exploration. One area of particular interest for exploration is Martian lava tubes, which have several distinct features of interest. First, it is theorized…
Search and rescue with a team of heterogeneous mobile robots in unknown and large-scale underground environments requires high-precision localization and mapping. This crucial requirement is faced with many challenges in complex and…
While most micro-robots face difficulty traveling on rugged and uneven terrain, beetles can walk smoothly on the complex substrate without slipping or getting stuck on the surface due to their stiffness-variable tarsi and expandable hooks…
In developing mobile robots for exploration on the planetary surface, it is crucial to evaluate the robot's performance, demonstrating the harsh environment in which the robot will actually be deployed. Repeatable experiments in a…