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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…
Low-cost coin vibrational motors, used in haptic feedback, exhibit rotational internal motion inside a rigid case. Because the motor case motion exhibits rotational symmetry, when placed into a fluid such as glycerin, the motor does not…
Legged locomotion on flowing ground ({\em e.g.} granular media) is unlike locomotion on hard ground because feet experience both solid- and fluid-like forces during surface penetration. Recent bio-inspired legged robots display speed…
Bristle-bots are legged robots that can be easily made out of a toothbrush head and a small vibrating engine. Despite their simple appearance, the mechanism enabling them to propel themselves by exploiting friction with the substrate is far…
Compared to agile legged animals, wheeled and tracked vehicles often suffer large performance loss on granular surfaces like sand and gravel. Understanding the mechanics of legged locomotion on granular media can aid the development of…
Parallel robots are capable of high-speed manipulation and have become essential tools in the industry. The proximal placement of their motors and the low weight of their end effectors make them ideal for generating highly dynamic motion.…
In this paper, we present a novel rolling, jumping robot. The robot consists of a driven pendulum mounted to a wheel in a compact, lightweight, 3D printed design. We show that by driving the pendulum to shift the robot's weight…
Motivated by a winged seed, which takes advantage of a wing with high angles of attack and its associated leading-edge vortex to boost lift, we propose a powered 13.8-gram aerial robot with the maximum take-off weight of 310 mN (31.6 gram)…
We design an insect-sized rolling microrobot driven by continuously rotating wheels. It measures 18mm$\times$8mm$\times$8mm. There are 2 versions of the robot - a 96mg laser-powered one and a 130mg supercapacitor powered one. The robot can…
Experimental results are presented for a vertically shaken granular layer. In the range of accelerations explored, the layer develops a convective motion in the form of one or more rolls. The velocity of the grains near the wall has been…
Jumping and hopping locomotion are efficient means of traversing unstructured rugged terrain with the former being the focus of roboticists; a focus that has recently been changing. This focus has led to significant performance and…
Plants display physical displacements during their growth due to photosynthesis, which converts light into chemical energy. This can be interpreted as plants acting as actuators with a built-in power source. This paper presents a method to…
Pour sand into a container and only the grains near the top surface move. The collective motion associated with the translational and rotational energy of the grains in a thin flowing layer is quickly dissipated as friction through…
The flow of granular material in a rotating cylinder was simulated by molecular dynamics in two dimensions using spherical as well as nonspherical grains. At very low but constant angular velocity we found that the flow varies irregularly…
Experimental results are presented on the transport properties of granular materials on a vibratory conveyor. For circular oscillations of the shaking trough a non-monotonous dependence of the transport velocity on the normalized…
Vine robots are a class of soft continuum robots that grow via tip eversion, allowing them to move their tip without relying on reaction forces from the environment. Constructed from compliant materials such as fabric and thin, flexible…
This paper designs a new spherical robot structure capable of supporting high-speed motion at up to 10 m/s. Building upon a single-pendulum-driven spherical robot, the design incorporates a momentum wheel with an axis aligned with the…
Future planetary exploration missions will require reaching challenging regions such as craters and steep slopes. Such regions are ubiquitous and present science-rich targets potentially containing information regarding the planet's…
This paper presents a 3-DOF hopping robot with a human-like lower-limb joint configuration and a flat foot, capable of performing dynamic and repetitive jumping motions. To achieve both high torque output and a large hollow shaft diameter…
Spherical robots typically require at least two actuators to achieve controlled 2D planar motion. Here we present Rollbot, the first spherical robot capable of controllably maneuvering on a 2D plane with a single actuator, challenging this…