Related papers: On Locomotion of a Laminated Fish-inspired robot i…
Amphibious robots, operating seamlessly across land and water, are advancing applications in conservation, disaster response, and defense. Their performance depends on locomotion mechanisms, actuation technologies, and sensor-control…
Fish often travel in highly organized schools. One of the most quoted functions of these configurations is energy savings. Here, we verified the hypothesis and explored the mechanism through series of experiments on "schooling" robotic…
We present a novel design for a low-cost robotic boat powered by a single actuator, useful for both modular and swarming applications. The boat uses the conservation of angular momentum and passive flippers to convert the motion of a single…
Many marine creatures, gastropods, and earthworms generate continuous traveling waves in their bodies for locomotion within marine environments, complex surfaces, and inside narrow gaps. In this work, we study theoretically and…
Traditional rigid underwater vehicles pose risks to delicate marine ecosystems due to high-speed propellers and rigid hulls. This paper presents BactoBot, a low-cost, soft underwater robot designed for safe and gentle marine exploration.…
Underwater robotics has advanced significantly over recent decades. however, the development of miniaturized underwater robots remains limited by low energy densities of traditional power sources. Nature offers compelling…
Amphibious legged robots inspired by salamanders are promising in applications in complex amphibious environments. However, despite the significant success of training controllers that achieve diverse locomotion behaviors in conventional…
Faced with strong demand for robots working in underwater pipeline environments, a novel underwater multi-model locomotion robot is designed and studied in this research. By mimicking the earthworm's metameric body, the robot is segmented…
Fish locomotion is enabled by fin rays-actively deformable boney rods, which manipulate the fin to facilitate complex interaction with surrounding water and enable propulsion. Replicating the performance and kinematics of the biological fin…
Taking inspiration from how the brain coordinates multiple learning systems is an appealing strategy to endow robots with more flexibility. One of the expected advantages would be for robots to autonomously switch to the least costly system…
This study presents the development and experimental verification of a biomimetic manta ray robot for underwater autonomous exploration. Inspired by manta rays, the robot uses flapping motion for propulsion to minimize seabed disturbance…
Soft robots require directional control to navigate complex terrains. However, achieving such control often requires multiple actuators, which increases mechanical complexity, complicates control systems, and raises energy consumption.…
The schooling behavior of fish is hypothesized to confer many survival benefits, including foraging success, safety from predators, and energy savings through hydrodynamic interactions when swimming in formation. Underwater robot…
Humanoid robots are machines built with an anthropomorphic shape. Despite decades of research into the subject, it is still challenging to tackle the robot locomotion problem from an algorithmic point of view. For example, these machines…
Fishes, cetaceans, and many other aquatic vertebrates undulate their bodies to propel themselves through water. Swimming requires an intricate interplay between sensing the environment, making decisions, controlling internal dynamics, and…
Bioinspired snake robotics has been a highly active area of research over the years and resulted in many prototypes. Much of these prototypes takes the form of serially jointed-rigid bodies. The emergence of soft robotics contributed to a…
Research on the co-optimization of soft robotic design and control requires rapid means for real-world validation. Existing creation pipelines do not allow for the swift prototyping of soft robots to quickly test various design…
Robots are becoming increasingly essential for traversing complex environments such as disaster areas, extraterrestrial terrains, and marine environments. Yet, their potential is often limited by mobility and adaptability constraints. In…
Understanding and modeling animal behavior is essential for studying collective motion, decision-making, and bio-inspired robotics. Yet, evaluating the accuracy of behavioral models still often relies on offline comparisons to static…
Matching the swimming efficiency and agility of fish has remained an elusive goal in underwater robotics. Such locomotion capabilities rely on complex vortex interactions between the robot's body and the surrounding fluid. However,…