Related papers: ReQuBiS -- Reconfigurable Quadrupedal-Bipedal Snak…
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…
Exploring and navigating in extreme environments, such as caves, oceans, and planetary bodies, are often too hazardous for humans, and as such, robots are possible surrogates. These robots are met with significant locomotion challenges that…
This paper presents the design and performance of a screw-propelled redundant serpentine robot. This robot comprises serially linked, identical modules, each incorporating an Archimedes' screw for propulsion and a universal joint (U-Joint)…
Snake robots composed of alternating single-axis pitch and yaw joints have many internal degrees of freedom, which make them capable of versatile three-dimensional locomotion. In motion planning process, snake robot motions are often…
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…
While quadruped robots usually have good stability and load capacity, bipedal robots offer a higher level of flexibility / adaptability to different tasks and environments. A multi-modal legged robot can take the best of both worlds. In…
Snakes are a remarkable evolutionary success story. Many snake-inspired robots have been proposed over the years. Soft robotic snakes (SRS) with their continuous and smooth bending capability better mimic their biological counterparts'…
Loco-manipulation of quadrupedal robots has broadened robotic applications, but using legs as manipulators often compromises locomotion, while mounting arms complicates the system. To mitigate this issue, we introduce bipedalism for…
Navigating a large-scaled robot in unknown and cluttered height-constrained environments is challenging. Not only is a fast and reliable planning algorithm required to go around obstacles, the robot should also be able to change its…
A robotic platform for mobile manipulation needs to satisfy two contradicting requirements for many real-world applications: A compact base is required to navigate through cluttered indoor environments, while the support needs to be large…
Snake robots are characterized by their ability to navigate through small spaces and loose terrain by utilizing efficient cyclic forms of locomotion. Soft snake robots are a subset of these robots which utilize soft, compliant actuators to…
Quadrupedal robots resemble the physical ability of legged animals to walk through unstructured terrains. However, designing a controller for quadrupedal robots poses a significant challenge due to their functional complexity and requires…
Snakes can move through almost any terrain. Similarly, snake robots hold the promise as a versatile platform to traverse complex environments like earthquake rubble. Unlike snake locomotion on flat surfaces which is inherently stable, when…
This paper presents the MOBIUS platform, a bipedal robot capable of walking, crawling, climbing, and rolling. MOBIUS features four limbs, two 6-DoF arms with two-finger grippers for manipulation and climbing, and two 4-DoF legs for…
Multimodal locomotion capability is an emerging topic in robotics field, and various novel mobile robots have been developed to enable the maneuvering in both terrestrial and aerial domains. Among these hybrid robots, several…
The aim of this work is to enable quadrupedal robots to mount skateboards using Reverse Curriculum Reinforcement Learning. Although prior work has demonstrated skateboarding for quadrupeds that are already positioned on the board, the…
Bio-inspired multi-joint snake robots offer the advantages of terrain adaptability due to their limbless structure and high flexibility. However, a series of dozens of motor units in typical multiple-joint snake robots results in a heavy…
This work aims to push the limits of agility for bipedal robots by enabling a torque-controlled bipedal robot to perform robust and versatile dynamic jumps in the real world. We present a reinforcement learning framework for training a…
Soft robotic snakes (SRSs) have a unique combination of continuous and compliant properties that allow them to imitate the complex movements of biological snakes. Despite the previous attempts to develop SRSs, many have been limited to…
We introduce and analyze a model for self-reconfigurable robots made up of unit-cube modules. Compared to past models, our model aims to newly capture two important practical aspects of real-world robots. First, modules often do not occupy…