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The nonlinear mechanics of a flexible elastic rod constrained at its edges by a pair of sliding sleeves is analyzed. The planar equilibrium configurations of this variable-length elastica are found to have shape defined only by the…
Limbless crawling is ubiquitous in biology, from cells to organisms. We develop and analyze a model for the dynamics of one-dimensional elastic crawlers, subject to active stress and deformation-dependent friction with the substrate. We…
We discuss how searching for finite amplitude disturbances of a given energy which maximise their subsequent energy growth after a certain later time $T$ can be used to probe phase space around a reference state and ultimately to find other…
In recent papers it has been suggested that human locomotion may be modeled as an inverse optimal control problem. In this paradigm, the trajectories are assumed to be solutions of an optimal control problem that has to be determined. We…
Legged rovers provide enhanced mobility compared to wheeled platforms, enabling navigation on steep and irregular planetary terrains. However, traditional legged locomotion might be energetically inefficient and potentially dangerous to the…
Faced with complex and unstructured construction environments, wheeled and tracked robots exhibit significant limitations in terrain adaptability and flexibility, making it difficult to meet the requirements of autonomous operation.…
Undulatory locomotion is ubiquitous in nature and observed in different media, from the swimming of flagellated microorganisms in biological fluids, to the slithering of snakes on land, or the locomotion of sandfish lizards in sand. Despite…
We propose a method of learning a policy for human-like locomotion via deep reinforcement learning based on a human anatomical model, muscle actuation, and biologically inspired rewards, without any inherent control rules or reference…
Dynamic locomotion in rough terrain requires accurate foot placement, collision avoidance, and planning of the underactuated dynamics of the system. Reliably optimizing for such motions and interactions in the presence of imperfect and…
In nature, limbless locomotion is adopted by a wide range of organisms at various length scales. Interestingly, undulatory, crawling and inching/looping gait constitutes a fundamental class of limbless locomotion and is often observed in…
A beam-slider system is considered whose passive self-adaption relies on an intricate locomotion process involving both frictional and unilateral contact. The system also exploits geometric nonlinearity to achieve broadband efficacy. The…
Walking motion planning based on Divergent Component of Motion (DCM) and Linear Inverted Pendulum Model (LIPM) is one of the alternatives that could be implemented to generate online humanoid robot gait trajectories. This algorithm requires…
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…
Musculoskeletal humanoids have various biomimetic advantages, and the redundant muscle arrangement allowing for variable stiffness control is one of the most important. In this study, we focus on one feature of the redundancy, which enables…
We studied locomotion of a crawler on a thin Newtonian fluid film whose viscosity varied spatially. We first derived a general locomotion velocity formula with fluid viscosity variations via the lubrication theory. For further analysis, the…
Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…
Robotic locomotion often relies on sequenced gaits to efficiently convert control input into desired motion. Despite extensive studies on gait optimization, achieving smooth and efficient gait transitions remains challenging. In this paper,…
As well known, the huge memory and compute costs of both artificial neural networks (ANNs) and spiking neural networks (SNNs) greatly hinder their deployment on edge devices with high efficiency. Model compression has been proposed as a…
Motion in-betweening is a crucial tool for animators, enabling intricate control over pose-level details in each keyframe. Recent machine learning solutions for motion in-betweening rely on complex models, incorporating skeleton-aware…
Animal movement exhibits complex behavior which can be influenced by unobserved environmental conditions. We propose a model which allows for a spatially-varying movement rate and spatially-varying drift through a semiparametric potential…