Related papers: An Insect-scale Self-sufficient Rolling Microrobot
We design and test an octopus-inspired flexible hull robot that demonstrates outstanding fast-starting performance. The robot is hyper-inflated with water, and then rapidly deflates to expel the fluid so as to power the escape maneuver.…
A mobility mechanism for robots to be used in tight spaces shared with people requires it to have a small footprint, to move omnidirectionally, as well as to be highly maneuverable. However, currently there exist few such mobility…
Microscopic robots could perform tasks with high spatial precision, such as acting on precisely-targeted cells in biological tissues. Some tasks may benefit from robots that change shape, such as elongating to improve chemical gradient…
Although recent years have seen significant progress of humanoid robots in walking and running, the frequent foot strikes with ground during these locomotion gaits inevitably generate high instantaneous impact forces, which leads to…
Miniature robots are untethered actuators, which have significant potential to make existing minimally invasive surgery considerably safer and painless, and enable unprecedented treatments because they are much smaller and dexterous than…
This paper presents a novel design of a crawler robot which is capable of transforming its chassis from an Omni crawler mode to a large-sized wheel mode using a novel mechanism. The transformation occurs without any additional actuators.…
Electrically-driven soft robots based on piezoelectric actuators may enable compact form factors and maneuverability in complex environments. In most prior work, piezoelectric actuators are used to control a single degree of freedom. In…
Terrestrial animals and robots are susceptible to flipping-over during rapid locomotion in complex terrains. However, small robots are less capable of self-righting from an upside-down orientation compared to small animals like insects.…
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…
Miniature robots provide unprecedented access to confined environments and show promising potential for novel applications such as search-and-rescue and high-value asset inspection. The capability of body deformation further enhances the…
Mobile robots are increasingly utilized in agriculture to automate labor-intensive tasks such as weeding, sowing, harvesting and soil analysis. Recently, agricultural robots have been developed to detect and remove weeds using mechanical…
Sub-gram flapping-wing flying insect robots (FIRs) are challenging to model because of mechanical complexity in their wings, unsteady aerodynamic flow, and the difficulty of making precise measurements at a small scale. Coupling effects…
Planning locomotion trajectories for legged microrobots is challenging because of their complex morphology, high frequency passive dynamics, and discontinuous contact interactions with their environment. Consequently, such research is often…
In this paper we study the self-propulsion of a symmetric V-shape micro-robot (or V-robot) which consists of three spheres connected by two arms with an angle between them; the arms' lengths and the angle are changing periodically. Using an…
The current understanding of motility through body shape deformation of microorganisms and the knowledge of fluid flows at the microscale provides ample examples for mimicry and design of soft microrobots. In this work, a two-dimensional…
This paper introduces a Cosserat rod based mathematical model for modeling a self-controllable variable curvature soft continuum robot. This soft continuum robot has a hollow inner channel and was developed with the ability to perform…
Rotation in micro/nanoscale provides extensive applications in mechanical actuation$^{1, 2}$, cargo delivery$^{3, 4}$, and biomolecule manipulation$^{5, 6}$. Light can be used to induce a mechanical rotation remotely, instantly and…
An important function of autonomous microrobots is the ability to perform robust movement over terrain. This paper explores an edge ML approach to microrobot locomotion, allowing for on-device, lower latency control under compute, memory,…
Capsule robots are promising tools for minimally invasive diagnostics and therapy, with applications from gastrointestinal endoscopy to targeted drug delivery and biopsy sampling. Conventional magnetic capsule robots embed bulky permanent…
The aim of this paper is to describe the self-propulsion of a micro-robot (or micro-swimmer) consisting of $N$ spheres moving along a fixed line. The spheres are linked to each other by arms with the lengths changing periodically. For the…