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Multirotor aerial robots excel at maneuvering in three-dimensional space, and recent advances enable nimble navigation in cluttered and confined environments, especially for small airframes. By contrast, platforms built for high-altitude…
Typical drones with multi rotors are generally less maneuverable due to unidirectional thrust, which may be unfavorable to agile flight in very narrow and confined spaces. This paper suggests a new bio-inspired drone that is empowered with…
The heavy-load legged robot has strong load carrying capacity and can adapt to various unstructured terrains. But the large weight results in higher requirements for motion stability and environmental perception ability. In order to utilize…
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…
Active systems of self-propelled agents, e.g., birds, fish, and bacteria, can organize their collective motion into myriad autonomous behaviors. Ubiquitous in nature and across length scales, such phenomena are also amenable to artificial…
Many applications require robots to move through complex 3-D terrain with large obstacles, such as self-driving, search and rescue, and extraterrestrial exploration. Although robots are already excellent at avoiding sparse obstacles, they…
As robotic systems increasingly operate in unstructured, cluttered, and previously unseen environments, there is a growing need for manipulators that combine compliance, adaptability, and precise control. This work presents a real-time…
Extrinsic manipulation, a technique that enables robots to leverage extrinsic resources for object manipulation, presents practical yet challenging scenarios. Particularly in the context of extrinsic manipulation on a supporting plane,…
Flapping-Wing Micro Aerial Vehicles (FWMAVs) provide exceptional maneuverability and aerodynamic efficiency but pose significant challenges for onboard control due to nonlinear dynamics and stringent Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP)…
Locomotion by shape changes (spermatozoon swimming, snake slithering, bird flapping) or gas expulsion (rocket firing) is assumed to require environmental interaction, due to conservation of momentum. As first noted in (Wisdom, 2003) and…
This paper introduces DogSurf - a newapproach of using quadruped robots to help visually impaired people navigate in real world. The presented method allows the quadruped robot to detect slippery surfaces, and to use audio and haptic…
The vast majority of visual animals actively control their eyes, heads, and/or bodies to direct their gaze toward different parts of their environment. In contrast, recent applications of reinforcement learning in robotic manipulation…
Seeing-eye robots are very useful tools for guiding visually impaired people, potentially producing a huge societal impact given the low availability and high cost of real guide dogs. Although a few seeing-eye robot systems have already…
In biological systems, both skin sensitivity and body flexibility play crucial roles in haptic perception. Fully soft robots often suffer from structural fragility and delayed sensory processing, limiting their practical functionality. The…
The physical interaction of aerial robots with their environment has countless potential applications and is an emerging area with many open challenges. Fully-actuated multirotors have been introduced to tackle some of these challenges.…
Exploring and inspecting \emph{Hidden Spaces}, defined as environments whose entrances are accessible only to aerial robots but remain unexplored due to geometric constraints, limited flight time, and communication loss, remains a major…
Mudskippers are unique amphibious fish capable of locomotion in diverse environments, including terrestrial surfaces, aquatic habitats, and highly viscous substrates such as mud. This versatile locomotion is largely enabled by their…
The principal aim of this Master's thesis is to propel the optimization of the membrane wing structure of the Northeastern Aerobat through origami techniques and enhancing its capacity for secure hovering within confined spaces.…
Haptic sensation is an important modality for interacting with the real world. This paper proposes a general framework of inferring haptic forces on the surface of a 3D structure from internal deformations using a small number of physical…
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) perception relies on onboard sensors like cameras and LiDAR, which are limited by the narrow field of view (FoV). We present Self-Perception INertial Navigation Enabled Rotorcraft (SPINNER), a self-rotating…