Related papers: Fluid-driven traveling waves in soft robots
Soft living tissues like cartilage can be considered as biphasic materials comprised of a fibrous complex biopolymer network and a viscous background liquid. Here, we show by a combination of experiment and theoretical analysis that both…
The automatic design of embodied agents (e.g. robots) has existed for 31 years and is experiencing a renaissance of interest in the literature. To date however, the field has remained narrowly focused on two kinds of anatomically simple…
In this review we argue for the creation of a physics of moving systems -- a locomotion "robophysics" -- which we define as the pursuit of the discovery of principles of self generated motion. Robophysics can provide an important…
Bio-inspired soft robots have already shown the ability to handle uncertainty and adapt to unstructured environments. However, their availability is partially restricted by time-consuming, costly and highly supervised design-fabrication…
Flying animals, such as bats, fly through their fluidic environment as they create air jets and form wake structures downstream of their flight path. Bats, in particular, dynamically morph their highly flexible and dexterous armwing to…
This paper deals with the dead-water phenomenon, which occurs when a ship sails in a stratified fluid, and experiences an important drag due to waves below the surface. More generally, we study the generation of internal waves by a…
Metachronal locomotion is a widespread swimming mode used by aquatic swarming organisms to achieve performance and maneuverability in the intermediate Reynolds number regime. Our understanding of the mechanisms driving these abilities is…
Fully autonomous mobile robots have a multitude of potential applications, but guaranteeing robust navigation performance remains an open research problem. For many tasks such as repeated infrastructure inspection, item delivery, or…
Flexible mechanical metamaterials are compliant structures engineered to achieve unique properties via the large deformation of their components. While their static character has been studied extensively, the study of their dynamic…
The theories of aero- and hydrodynamics predict animal movement and device design in air and water through the computation of lift, drag, and thrust forces. Although models of terrestrial legged locomotion have focused on interactions with…
Transport of tracer particles through mesh-like environments such as biological hydrogels and polymer matrices is ubiquitous in nature. These tracers could be passive, such as colloids or active (self-propelled), such as synthetic…
In robot swarms operating under highly restrictive sensing and communication constraints, individuals may need to use direct physical proximity to facilitate information exchange. However, in certain task-related scenarios, this requirement…
A general localization mechanism for waves in dissipative systems is identified that does not require the bistability of the basic state and the nonlinear plane-wave state. The mechanism explains the two-dimensional localized wave…
We present a semantically rich graph representation for indoor robotic navigation. Our graph representation encodes: semantic locations such as offices or corridors as nodes, and navigational behaviors such as enter office or cross a…
The development of multifunctional and biocompatible microrobots for biomedical applications relies on achieving locomotion through viscous fluids. Here, we describe a framework for swimming in homogeneous magnetoelastic membranes composed…
Characterized by their elongate bodies and relatively simple legs, multi-legged robots have the potential to locomote through complex terrains for applications such as search-and-rescue and terrain inspection. Prior work has developed…
Soft robotics is advancing the use of flexible materials for adaptable robotic systems. Membrane-actuated soft robots address the limitations of traditional soft robots by using pressurized, extensible membranes to achieve stable, large…
Nature suggests that exploiting the elasticities and natural dynamics of robotic systems could increase their locomotion efficiency. Prior work on elastic snake robots supports this hypothesis, but has not fully exploited the nonlinear…
We report laboratory experiments on surface waves generated in a uniform fluid layer whose bottom undergoes a sudden upward motion. Simultaneous measurements of the free-surface deformation and the fluid velocity field are focused on the…
Worm-inspired robots provide an effective locomotion strategy for constrained environments by combining cyclic body deformation with alternating anchoring. For compliant robots, however, the interaction between deformable anchoring…