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Every robot built to date was predesigned by an external process, prior to deployment. Here we show a robot that actively participates in its own design during its lifetime. Starting from a randomly assembled body, and using only…
As robots leave the controlled environments of factories to autonomously function in more complex, natural environments, they will have to respond to the inevitable fact that they will become damaged. However, while animals can quickly…
Multi-legged robots deployed in complex missions are susceptible to physical damage in their legs, impairing task performance and potentially compromising mission success. This letter presents a rapid, training-free damage recovery…
Damage recovery is critical for autonomous robots that need to operate for a long time without assistance. Most current methods are complex and costly because they require anticipating each potential damage in order to have a contingency…
Biological systems are very robust to morphological damage, but artificial systems (robots) are currently not. In this paper we present a system based on neural cellular automata, in which locomoting robots are evolved and then given the…
Robots are increasingly entering uncertain and unstructured environments. Within these, robots are bound to face unexpected external disturbances like accidental human or tool collisions. Robots must develop the capacity to respond to…
Morphological regeneration is an important feature that highlights the environmental adaptive capacity of biological systems. Lack of this regenerative capacity significantly limits the resilience of machines and the environments they can…
Despite recent advances in robust locomotion, bipedal robots operating in the real world remain at risk of falling. While most research focuses on preventing such events, we instead concentrate on the phenomenon of falling itself.…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
Evolutionary robotics has aimed to optimize robot control and morphology to produce better and more robust robots. Most previous research only addresses optimization of control, and does this only in simulation. We have developed a…
The high probability of hardware failures prevents many advanced robots (e.g., legged robots) from being confidently deployed in real-world situations (e.g., post-disaster rescue). Instead of attempting to diagnose the failures, robots…
This paper presents a framework that enables robots to automatically recover from assumption violations of high-level specifications during task execution. In contrast to previous methods relying on user intervention to impose additional…
Detecting and adapting to catastrophic failures in robotic systems requires a robot to learn its new dynamics quickly and safely to best accomplish its goals. To address this challenging problem, we propose probabilistically-safe, online…
If robots are ever to achieve autonomous motion comparable to that exhibited by animals, they must acquire the ability to quickly recover motor behaviors when damage, malfunction, or environmental conditions compromise their ability to move…
Evolutionary algorithms offer great promise for the automatic design of robot bodies, tailoring them to specific environments or tasks. Most research is done on simplified models or virtual robots in physics simulators, which do not capture…
Real-time proprioception is a challenging problem for soft robots, which have almost infinite degrees-of-freedom in body deformation. When multiple actuators are used, it becomes more difficult as deformation can also occur on actuators…
This paper describes the design and control of a support and recovery system for use with planar legged robots. The system operates in three modes. First, it can be operated in a fully transparent mode where no forces are applied to the…
The emergence of vision catalysed a pivotal evolutionary advancement, enabling organisms not only to perceive but also to interact intelligently with their environment. This transformation is mirrored by the evolution of robotic systems,…
Legged machines are becoming increasingly agile and adaptive but they have so far lacked the morphological diversity of legged animals, which have been rearranged and reshaped to fill millions of niches. Unlike their biological…
Multi-legged robots (MLRs) are vulnerable to leg damage during complex missions, which can impair their performance. This paper presents a self-modeling and damage identification algorithm that enables autonomous adaptation to partial or…