Related papers: An Insect-scale Untethered Laser-powered Jumping M…
True microrobots, in contrast with externally controlled microparticles, must harvest or carry their own source of energy, as well as their own (preferably programmable) microcontroller of actuators for locomotion, using information…
High-speed locomotion of animals gives them tremendous advantages in exploring, hunting, and escaping from predators in varying environments. Enlightened by the fast-running gait of mammals like cheetahs and wolves, we designed and…
Tiny flying robots hold great potential for search-and-rescue, safety inspections, and environmental monitoring, but their small size limits conventional sensing-especially with poor-lighting, smoke, dust or reflective obstacles. Inspired…
Thin dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) features a unique in-plane configuration, enabling low-profile designs capable of accessing millimetre-scale narrow spaces. However, most existing DEA-powered soft robots require high voltages and…
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
Magnetic elastomers deform under a magnetic field, working as a soft actuator. Untethered microbot made of magnetic elastomers have great potentials in performing medical tasks inside human body as mini doctors. However, the lack of a…
We report on an experimental study of proton acceleration by intense laser irradiation of micrometric bar targets, whose dimensions are transversely immersed in the laser focal volume and are longitudinally smaller than half its wavelength.…
Arboreal environments challenge current robots but are deftly traversed by many familiar animal locomotors such as squirrels. We present a small, 450 g robot "Pinto" developed for tree-jumping, a behavior seen in squirrels but rarely in…
Physical joint limits are common in legged robots and can restrict workspace, constrain gait design, and increase the risk of hardware damage. This paper introduces MiNI-Q^2, a miniature, wire-free quadruped robot with independently…
Millimeter-scale embedded sensing systems have unique advantages over larger devices as they are able to capture, analyze, store, and transmit data at the source while being unobtrusive and covert. However, area-constrained systems pose…
Swelling-induced snap-buckling in a 3D micro hydrogel device, inspired by the insect-trapping action of Venus flytrap, makes it possible to generate astonishingly fast actuation. We demonstrate that elastic energy is effectively stored and…
Laser-accelerated lightsails enable new types of missions that are very different from the Breakthrough Starshot mission to the Centauri system that aims to send 1 gram of payload at 0.2 c. The present work widens the mission design space…
Insect-scale micro-aerial vehicles, especially lightweight, flapping-wing robots, are becoming increasingly important for safe motion sensing in spatially constrained environments such as living spaces. However, yaw control using flapping…
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…
Miniature underwater robots play a crucial role in the exploration and development of marine resources, particularly in confined spaces and high-pressure deep-sea environments. This study presents the design, optimization, and performance…
We present a rolling and jumping underactuated monopedal robot designed to explore multimodal locomotion on low-gravity bodies. It uses only two reaction wheels to control its spatial orientation with two controllers: a balancing controller…
Cardiovascular diseases account for around 17.9 million deaths per year globally, the treatment of which is challenging considering the confined space and complex topology of the vascular network and high risks during operations. Robots,…
We present a new evolution of the Very Little Eel-Inspired roBot, the VLEIBot++, a 900-mg swimmer driven by two 10-mg bare high-work density (HWD) actuators, whose functionality is based on the use of shape-memory alloy (SMA) wires. An…
Aerial insects exhibit highly agile maneuvers such as sharp braking, saccades, and body flips under disturbance. In contrast, insect-scale aerial robots are limited to tracking non-aggressive trajectories with small body acceleration. This…
Soft compliant microrobots have the potential to deliver significant societal impact when deployed in applications such as search and rescue. In this research we present mCLARI, a body compliant quadrupedal microrobot of 20mm neutral body…