Related papers: Efficient sliding locomotion with isotropic fricti…
Over the past few decades, oscillating flexible foils have been used to study the physics of organismal propulsion in different fluid environments. Here we extend this work to a study of flexible foils in a frictional environment. When the…
We consider third-order dynamic systems which have an integral feedback action and discontinuous relay disturbance. More specifically for the applications, the focus is on the integral plus state-feedback control of the motion systems with…
We study folding in 16-monomer heteropolymers on the square lattice. For a given sequence, thermodynamic properties and stability of the native state are unique. However, the kinetics of folding depends on the model of dynamics adopted for…
In this paper, we propose a method for generating undulatory gaits for snake robots. Instead of starting from a pre-defined movement pattern such as a serpenoid curve, we use a Model Predictive Control approach to automatically generate…
This article presents computationally efficient algorithms for modeling two special cases of rigid contact---contact with only viscous friction and contact without slip---that have particularly useful applications in robotic locomotion and…
Snake robots composed of alternating single-axis pitch and yaw joints have many internal degrees of freedom, which make them capable of versatile three-dimensional locomotion. In motion planning process, snake robot motions are often…
We present a locomotion mechanism that uses the stick-slip transition of a soft passive structure with an internal mechanical resonance. The structure is harmonically driven by a global vertical shaking and, because of its resonance…
Muscle models and animal observations suggest that physical damping is beneficial for stabilization. Still, only a few implementations of mechanical damping exist in compliant robotic legged locomotion. It remains unclear how physical…
Bipedal animals have diverse morphologies and advanced locomotion abilities. Terrestrial birds, in particular, display agile, efficient, and robust running motion, in which they exploit the interplay between the body segment masses and…
We study stochastic motion under a nonlinear frictional force that levels off with increasing velocity. Specifically, our frictional force is of the so-called Coulomb-tanh type. At small speed, it increases approximately linearly with…
Despite advances in a diversity of environments, snake robots are still far behind snakes in traversing complex 3-D terrain with large obstacles. This is due to a lack of understanding of how to control 3-D body bending to push against…
An axisymmetric squirmer in a Bingham viscoplastic fluid is studied numerically to determine the effect of a yield stress environment on locomotion. The nonlinearity of the governing equations necessitates numerical methods, which is…
This thesis presents a unified modeling and simulation framework for analyzing sidewinding and tumbling locomotion of the COBRA snake robot across rigid, compliant, and granular terrains. A contact-implicit formulation is used to model…
Exploring and navigating in extreme environments, such as caves, oceans, and planetary bodies, are often too hazardous for humans, and as such, robots are possible surrogates. These robots are met with significant locomotion challenges that…
The surface morphology of faults controls the spatial anisotropy of their frictional properties, and hence their mechanical stability. Such anisotropy is only rarely studied in seismology models of fault slip, although it might be paramount…
Along with the advancement of robot skin technology, there has been notable progress in the development of snake robots featuring body-surface tactile perception. In this study, we proposed a locomotion control framework for snake robots…
We demonstrate that in a ferromagnetic substrate, which is continuously driven out of equilibrium by a field moving with constant velocity $v$, at least two types of friction may occur when $v$ goes to zero: The substrate may feel a…
The correlations in the motion of reptating polymers in their melt are investigated by means of kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of the three dimensional slithering snake version of the bond-fluctuation model. Surprisingly, the slithering…
Inspired by recent experiments of cells accumulating on anisotropic substrates, we study a two-dimensional, compressible, isotropic, active fluid in the presence of anisotropic friction. We find that regions of anisotropic friction that are…
Multi-legged robots with six or more legs are not in common use, despite designs with superior stability, maneuverability, and a low number of actuators being available for over 20 years. This may be in part due to the difficulty in…