Related papers: A crawling robot driven by a folded self-sustained…
In lunar and planetary exploration, legged robots have attracted significant attention as an alternative to conventional wheeled robots, which struggle to traverse rough and uneven terrain. To enable locomotion over highly irregular and…
Inchworm crawling allows for both quasistatic and dynamic gaits at a wide range of actuation frequencies. This locomotion mechanism is common in nonskeletal animals and exploited extensively in the bio-inspired field of soft robotics. In…
Imagine a robot that can assemble a functional product from the individual parts presented in any configuration to the robot. Designing such a robotic system is a complex problem which presents several open challenges. To bypass these…
This paper introduces HOPPY, an open-source, low-cost, robust, and modular kit for robotics education. The robot dynamically hops around a rotating gantry with a fixed base. The kit is intended to lower the entry barrier for studying…
Soft robotic grippers gently and safely manipulate delicate objects due to their inherent adaptability and softness. Limited by insufficient stiffness and imprecise force control, conventional soft grippers are not suitable for applications…
Soft robotics gripper have shown great promise in handling fragile and geometrically complex objects. However, most existing solutions rely on bulky actuators, complex control strategies, or advanced tactile sensing to achieve stable and…
Flapping-wing robots offer significant versatility; however, achieving efficient multi-modal locomotion remains challenging. This paper presents the design, modeling, and experimentation of a novel tailless flapping-wing robot with three…
Semiconductor microelectronics are emerging as a powerful tool for building smart, autonomous robots too small to see with the naked eye. Yet a number of existing microrobot platforms, despite significant advantages in speed, robustness,…
Rectilinear crawling locomotion is a primitive and common mode of locomotion in slender, soft-bodied animals. It requires coordinated contractions that propagate along a body that interacts frictionally with its environment. We propose a…
Origami offers a versatile framework for designing morphable structures and soft robots by exploiting the geometry of folds. Tubular origami structures can act as continuum manipulators that balance flexibility and strength. However,…
Legged locomotion is a highly promising but under-researched subfield within the field of soft robotics. The compliant limbs of soft-limbed robots offer numerous benefits, including the ability to regulate impacts, tolerate falls, and…
Origami has recently emerged as a platform for building functional engineering systems with versatile characteristics that targeted niche applications. One widely utilized origami-based structure is known as the Kresling origami spring…
A miniature robotic blimp, as one type of lighter-than-air aerial vehicle, has attracted increasing attention in the science and engineering field for its long flight duration and safe aerial locomotion. While a variety of miniature robotic…
This paper presents a novel design of a crawler robot which is capable of transforming its chassis from an Omni crawler mode to a large-sized wheel mode using a novel mechanism. The transformation occurs without any additional actuators.…
A new continuous model of shearable rod, subject to large elastic deformation, is derived from nonlinear homogenization of a one-dimensional periodic microstructured chain. As particular cases, the governing equations reduce to the Euler…
Experiments on physical continuum robot are the gold standard for evaluations. Currently, as no commercial continuum robot platform is available, a large variety of early-stage prototypes exists. These prototypes are developed by individual…
We present ROCK (Rolling One-motor Controlled rocK), a 1 degree-of-freedom robot consisting of a round shell and an internal pendulum. An uneven shell surface enables steering by using only the movement of the pendulum, allowing for…
In both animals and robots, locomotion capabilities are determined by the physical structure of the system. The majority of legged animals and robots are bilaterally symmetric, which facilitates locomotion with consistent headings and…
We introduce an elastic-driven self-folding approach that fabricates robots directly from flat 3D-printed conductive PLA nets. Elastic bands routed through printed hooks store energy that folds the sheet into programmed 3D geometries, while…
Manipulation of thin sheets by folding and cutting offers opportunity to engineer structures with novel mechanical properties, and to prescribe complex force-displacement relationships via material elasticity in combination with the…