Related papers: Friction modulation in limbless, three-dimensional…
Limbless terrestrial animals exhibit exceptional locomotor versatility and control, currently unmatched by engineered counterparts. Here, we introduce a computational framework that enables soft synthetic snakes to navigate unstructured,…
Friction, the resistive force between two surfaces sliding past each other, is at the core of a wide diversity of locomotion schemes. While such schemes are somewhat understood for homogeneous environments, locomotion based on friction in…
One way of controlling friction and associated energy losses is to engineer a deterministic structural pattern on the surface of the rubbing parts (i.e., texture engineering). Custom texturing enhances the quality of lubrication, reduces…
In this paper we study crawling locomotion based on directional frictional interactions, namely, frictional forces that are sensitive to the sign of the sliding velocity. Surface interactions of this type are common in biology, where they…
Snake robots are inspired by the ability of biological snakes to move over rock, grass, leaves, soil, up trees, along pavement and more. Their ability to move in multiple distinct environments is due to their legless locomotion strategy,…
Terrestrial locomotion requires generating appropriate ground reaction forces which depend on substrate geometry and physical properties. The richness of positions and orientations of terrain features in the 3-D world gives limbless animals…
Snakes can traverse almost all types of environments by bending their elongate bodies in 3-D to interact with the terrain. Similarly, a snake robot is a promising platform to perform critical tasks in various environments. Understanding how…
Locomotion is typically studied either in continuous media where bodies and legs experience forces generated by the flowing medium, or on solid substrates dominated by friction. In the former, centralized coordination is believed to…
Limbless locomotors, from microscopic worms to macroscopic snakes, traverse complex, heterogeneous natural environments typically using undulatory body wave propagation. Theoretical and robophysical models typically emphasize body…
Snake robots have the potential to maneuver through tightly packed and complex environments. One challenge in enabling them to do so is the complexity in determining how to coordinate their many degrees-of-freedom to create purposeful…
Friction is ubiquitous in daily life, from nanoscale machines to large engineering components. By probing the intricate interplay between system parameters and frictional behavior, scientists seek to unveil the underlying mechanisms that…
To proactively navigate and traverse various terrains, active use of visual perception becomes indispensable. We aim to investigate the feasibility and performance of using sparse visual observations to achieve perceptual locomotion over a…
We investigate the motion of active semiflexible filament with shape kinematics and hydrodynamic interaction including. Three types of filament motion are found: Translation, snaking and rotation. Change of flexibility will induce…
We report on memory effects involved in the transient frictional response of a contact interface between a silicone rubber and a spherical glass probe when it is perturbed by changes in the orientation of the driving motion or by velocity…
Limbless animals such as snakes, limbless lizards, worms, eels, and lampreys move their slender, long bodies in three dimensions to traverse diverse environments. Accurately quantifying their continuous body's 3-D shape and motion is…
The connection between friction and jamming in granular media, molecular glasses, and complex fluids is explored. The paper first reviews the way friction is measured, the types of results that are observed, and what is known about the…
In this theoretical study, we present an analytical framework to investigate the slithering motion of snakes on flat surfaces. While previous studies have predominantly relied on numerical methods to identify optimal locomotion kinematics,…
Soft robotic snakes made of compliant materials can continuously deform their bodies and, therefore, mimic the biological snakes' flexible and agile locomotion gaits better than their rigid-bodied counterparts. Without wheel support, to…
In this paper we tackle the problem of visually predicting surface friction for environments with diverse surfaces, and integrating this knowledge into biped robot locomotion planning. The problem is essential for autonomous robot…
In nature, limbless locomotion is adopted by a wide range of organisms at various length scales. Interestingly, undulatory, crawling and inching/looping gait constitutes a fundamental class of limbless locomotion and is often observed in…