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Faced with complex and unstructured construction environments, wheeled and tracked robots exhibit significant limitations in terrain adaptability and flexibility, making it difficult to meet the requirements of autonomous operation.…

Design of robotic systems that safely and efficiently operate in uncertain operational conditions, such as rehabilitation and physical assistance robots, remains an important challenge in the field. Current methods for the design of energy…

Many mechanical systems exhibit changes in their kinematic topology altering the mobility. Ideal contact is the best known cause, but also stiction and controlled locking of parts of a mechanism lead to topology changes. The latter is…

It is shown that a compound elastic structure, which displays a dynamic instability, may be designed as the union (or 'fusion') of two structures which are stable when separately analyzed. The compound elastic structure has two degrees of…

Architectural transformations play a key role in the evolution of complex systems, from design algorithms for metamaterials to flow and plasticity of disordered media. Here, we develop a general framework for the evolution of the linear…

Limbless organisms of all sizes use undulating patterns of self-deformation to locomote. Geometric mechanics, which maps deformations to motions, provides a powerful framework to formalize and investigate the theoretical properties and…

Shape-morphing metamaterials enable adaptive structures capable of complex functional deformations, with applications ranging from reconfigurable structures and soft robotics to medical devices. However, their design remains challenging due…

A new framework is developed for control of constrained nonlinear systems with structured parametric uncertainties. Forward invariance of a safe set is achieved through online parameter adaptation and data-driven model estimation. The new…

Autonomous robots may be able to adapt their behavior in response to changes in the environment. This is useful, for example, to efficiently handle limited resources or to respond appropriately to unexpected events such as faults. The…

This paper presents a modular framework for motion planning using movement primitives. Central to the approach is Contraction Theory, a modular stability tool for nonlinear dynamical systems. The approach extends prior methods by achieving…

This paper introduces variational design methods that are novel to Geophysics, and discusses their benefits and limitations in the context of geophysical applications and more established design methods. Variational methods rely on…

Adaptive structures are of interest for their ability to dynamically modify mechanical properties post fabrication, enabling structural performance that is responsive to environmental uncertainty and changing loading conditions. Dynamic…

When an inextensible elastic rod is 'injected' through a sliding sleeve against a fixed constraint, configurational forces are developed, deeply influencing the mechanical response. This effect, which is a consequence of the change in…

Predicting multiple plausible future trajectories of the nearby vehicles is crucial for the safety of autonomous driving. Recent motion prediction approaches attempt to achieve such multimodal motion prediction by implicitly regularizing…

Road vehicles contribute to significant levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A potential strategy for improving their aerodynamic efficiency and reducing emissions is through active adaptation of their exterior shapes to the…

Pattern-forming metamaterials feature microstructures specifically designed to change the material's macroscopic properties due to internal instabilities. These can be triggered either by mechanical deformation or, in the case of active…

It is important to understand how bipedal walkers balance and walk effectively on granular materials, such as sand and loose dirt, etc. This paper first presents a computational approach to obtain the motion and energy analysis of bipedal…

Planning of any motion starts by planning the trajectory of the CoM. It is of the highest importance to ensure that the robot will be able to perform planned trajectory. With increasing capabilities of the humanoid robots, the case when…

Motion simulation, prediction and planning are foundational tasks in autonomous driving, each essential for modeling and reasoning about dynamic traffic scenarios. While often addressed in isolation due to their differing objectives, such…

Active materials take advantage of their internal sources of energy to self-organize in an automated manner. This feature provides a novel opportunity to design micron-scale machines with minimal required control. However, self-organization…