Related papers: Friction modulation in limbless, three-dimensional…
Legged robots have the potential to leverage obstacles to climb steep sand slopes. However, efficiently repositioning these obstacles to desired locations is challenging. Here we present DiffusiveGRAIN, a learning-based method that enables…
The fundamental problem of friction in the presence of macroscopic adhesion, as in soft bodies, is receiving interest from many experimentalists. Since the first fracture mechanics `purely brittle' model of Savkoor and Briggs, models have…
The semantics of the environment, such as the terrain type and property, reveals important information for legged robots to adjust their behaviors. In this work, we present a framework that learns semantics-aware locomotion skills from…
We use immobility as an origin and reference for the measurement of locomotor behavior; speed, the direction of walking and the direction of facing as the three degrees of freedom shaping fly locomotor behavior, and cocaine as the parameter…
The failure of the population of micro-junctions forming the frictional interface between two solids is central to fields ranging from biomechanics to seismology. This failure is mediated by the propagation along the interface of various…
Legged robots must exhibit robust and agile locomotion across diverse, unstructured terrains, a challenge exacerbated under blind locomotion settings where terrain information is unavailable. This work introduces a hierarchical…
Learning world models from their sensory inputs enables agents to plan for actions by imagining their future outcomes. World models have previously been shown to improve sample-efficiency in simulated environments with few objects, but have…
While the animals' Fin-to-Limb evolution has been well-researched in biology, such morphological transformation remains under-adopted in the modern design of advanced robotic limbs. This paper investigates a novel class of overconstrained…
Synthesizing 3D human motion plays an important role in many graphics applications as well as understanding human activity. While many efforts have been made on generating realistic and natural human motion, most approaches neglect the…
Snake moves across various terrains by bending its elongated body. Recent studies discovered that snakes can use vertical bending to traverse terrain of large height variation, such as horizontally oriented cylinders, a wedge (Jurestovsky,…
Locomotion by shape changes (spermatozoon swimming, snake slithering, bird flapping) or gas expulsion (rocket firing) is assumed to require environmental interaction, due to conservation of momentum. As first noted in (Wisdom, 2003) and…
A synergetic model describing the state of an ultrathin lubricant layer squeezed between two atomically smooth solid surfaces operating in the boundary friction mode has been developed further. To explain the presence of different operation…
Very soft grain assemblies have unique shape-changing capabilities that allow them to be compressed far beyond the rigid jammed state by filling void spaces more effectively. However, accurately following the formation of these systems by…
The presence of interfaces and grain boundaries significantly impacts the mechanical properties of materials, particularly when dealing with micro- or nano-scale samples. Distinct interactions between dislocations and grain boundaries can…
Bacteria possess diverse mechanisms to regulate their motility in response to environmental and physiological signals, enabling them to navigate complex habitats and adapt their behavior. Among these mechanisms, interspecies recognition…
Some of the most challenging environments on our planet are accessible to quadrupedal animals but remain out of reach for autonomous machines. Legged locomotion can dramatically expand the operational domains of robotics. However,…
This letter considers control of a radially symmetric tripedal friction-driven robot. The robot features 3 servo motors mounted on a 3-D printed chassis 7 cm from the center of mass and separated 120 degrees. These motors drive limbs, which…
The locomotion of flexible membrane-like organisms on top of curved surfaces appears in different contexts and scales. Still, such dynamics have not yet been quantitatively modeled and no realization of such motion in manmade systems has…
The motion of three-phase contact lines is one of the most relevant research topics of micro- and nano-fluidics. According to many hydrodynamic and molecular models, the dynamics of contact lines is assumed overdamped and dominated by…
Small-scale structures on biological surfaces can profoundly impact how animals move, appear, and interact with their environments. Such textures may be especially important for limbless reptiles, such as snakes and legless lizards, because…