Related papers: Friction modulation in limbless, three-dimensional…
To traverse complex three-dimensional terrainwith large obstacles, animals and robots must transition across different modes. However, the most mechanistic understanding of terrestrial locomotion concerns how to generate and stabilize…
In collective motion, perceptually-limited individuals move in an ordered manner, without centralized control. The perception of each individual is highly localized, as is its ability to interact with others. While natural collective motion…
Robots "in-the-wild" encounter and must traverse widely varying terrain, ranging from solid ground to granular materials like sand to full liquids. Numerous approaches exist, including wheeled and legged robots, each excelling in specific…
Navigation of microorganisms is controlled by internal processes ultimately sensitive to mechanical or chemical signaling encountered along the path. In many natural environments, such as porous soils or physiological ducts, motile species…
In order to examine the influence of system dynamics on sliding friction, we introduce the so-called micro-walking machine. This model consists of a rigid body with a number of elastic contact spots that is pulled by a constantly moving…
Humans excel at robust bipedal walking in complex natural environments. In each step, they adequately tune the interaction of biomechanical muscle dynamics and neuronal signals to be robust against uncertainties in ground conditions.…
Snakes' bodies are covered in scales that make it easier to slide in some directions than in others. This frictional anisotropy allows for sliding locomotion with an undulatory gait, one of the most common for snakes. Isotropic friction is…
Studying snake robot locomotion in a cluttered environment has been a complicated task because the motion model is discontinuous due to the physical contact with obstacles, and the contact force cannot be determined solely by contact…
We optimize three-dimensional snake kinematics for locomotor efficiency. We assume a general space-curve representation of the snake backbone with small-to-moderate lifting off the ground and negligible body inertia. The cost of locomotion…
We study a continuum model of dislocation transport in order to investigate the formation of heterogeneous dislocation patterns. We propose a physical mechanism which relates the formation of heterogeneous patterns to the dynamics of a…
Soft and biological matter come in a variety of shapes and geometries. When soft surfaces that do not fit into each other due to a mismatch in Gaussian curvatures form an interface, beautiful geometry-induced patterns emerge. In this paper,…
This work developed a learning framework for perceptive legged locomotion that combines visual feedback, proprioceptive information, and active gait regulation of foot-ground contacts. The perception requires only one forward-facing camera…
Limbless creatures can crawl on flat surfaces by deforming their bodies and interacting with asperities on the ground, offering a biological blueprint for designing efficient limbless robots. Inspired by this natural locomotion, we present…
Spatial systems with heterogeneities are ubiquitous in nature, from precipitation, temperature and soil gradients controlling vegetation growth to morphogen gradients controlling gene expression in embryos. Such systems, generally described…
Many snakes live in deserts, forests, and river valleys and traverse challenging 3-D terrain like rocks, felled trees, and rubble, with obstacles as large as themselves and variable surface properties. By contrast, apart from branch…
Localized deformation patterns are a common motif in morphogenesis and are increasingly finding widespread applications in materials science, for instance as memory devices. Here we describe the emergence of spatially localized deformations…
Friction plays a key role in manipulating objects. Most of what we do with our hands, and most of what robots do with their grippers, is based on the ability to control frictional forces. This paper aims to better understand the variability…
Macroscopic friction coefficients observed in experiments are the result of various types of complex multiscale interactions between sliding surfaces. Therefore, there are several ways to modify them depending on the physical phenomena…
Logical and information aspects of friction and wetting (including the adhesion, capillarity, and superhydrophobicity) are discussed. Friction involves paradoxes, such as the Painlev\'e paradoxes of non-existence or non-uniqueness of…
Current studies on human locomotion focus mainly on solid ground walking conditions. In this paper, we present a biomechanic comparison of human walking locomotion on solid ground and sand. A novel dataset containing 3-dimensional motion…