Related papers: Efficient bending and lifting patterns in snake lo…
Forward uncertainty quantification in dynamical systems is challenging due to non-smooth or locally oscillating nonlinear behaviors. Spline dimensional decomposition (SDD) addresses such nonlinearity by partitioning input coordinates via…
This paper concerns optimal control of a nonconvex perturbed sweeping process and its applications to optimization of the planar crowd motion model of traffic equilibria. The obtained theoretical results allow us to investigate a dynamic…
Robots built from soft materials can alter their shape and size in a particular profile. This shape-changing ability could be extremely helpful for rescue robots and those operating in unknown terrains and environments. In changing shape,…
The quest for robust heuristics that are able to solve more than one problem is ongoing. In this paper, we present, discuss and analyse a technique called Evolutionary Squeaky Wheel Optimisation and apply it to two different personnel…
Micro-organisms expend energy moving through complex media. While propulsion speed is an important property of locomotion, efficiency is another factor that may determine the swimming gait adopted by a micro-organism in order to locomote in…
This paper investigates two optimization criteria for damping optimization in a multi-body oscillator system with arbitrary degrees of freedom ($n$), resembling string/rod free vibrations. The total average energy over all possible initial…
Compliant mechanisms achieve motion through elastic deformation. In this work, we address the synthesis of a compliant cross-hinge mechanism capable of large angular strokes while approximating the behavior of an ideal revolute joint. To…
Motion planning trajectories for a multi-limbed robot to climb up walls requires a unique combination of constraints on torque, contact force, and posture. This paper focuses on motion planning for one particular setup wherein a six-legged…
Quadrupedal animals employ diverse galloping strategies to optimize speed, stability, and energy efficiency. However, the biomechanical mechanisms that enable adaptive gait transitions during high-speed locomotion under load remain poorly…
Hybrid locomotion, which combines multiple modalities of locomotion within a single robot, enables robots to carry out complex tasks in diverse environments. This paper presents a novel method for planning multi-modal locomotion…
We describe an image compression method, consisting of a nonlinear analysis transformation, a uniform quantizer, and a nonlinear synthesis transformation. The transforms are constructed in three successive stages of convolutional linear…
Sampling-based algorithms are widely used for motion planning in high-dimensional configuration spaces. However, due to low sampling efficiency, their performance often diminishes in complex configuration spaces with narrow corridors.…
In this paper we study crawling locomotion based on directional frictional interactions, namely, frictional forces that are sensitive to the sign of the sliding velocity. Surface interactions of this type are common in biology, where they…
This article describes a set of methods for quickly computing the solution to the regularized optimal transport problem. It generalizes and improves upon the widely-used iterative Bregman projections algorithm (or Sinkhorn--Knopp…
A variety of swimming microorganisms, called ciliates, exploit the bending of a large number of small and densely-packed organelles, termed cilia, in order to propel themselves in a viscous fluid. We consider a spherical envelope model for…
Legged locomotion shows promise for running in complex, unstructured environments. Designing such legged robots requires considering heterogeneous, multi-domain constraints and variables, from mechanical hardware and geometry choices to…
We propose a reduced-space elasto-dynamic solver that is well suited for augmenting rigged character animations with secondary motion. At the core of our method is a novel deformation subspace based on Linear Blend Skinning that overcomes…
Rectilinear forms of snake-like robotic locomotion are anticipated to be an advantage in obstacle-strewn scenarios characterizing urban disaster zones, subterranean collapses, and other natural environments. The elongated, laterally-narrow…
Subterranean burrowing is inherently difficult for robots because of the high forces experienced as well as the high amount of uncertainty in this domain. Because of the difficulty in modeling forces in granular media, we propose the use of…
Biological locomotion in nature is often achieved by the interaction between a flexible body and its surrounding medium. The interaction of a flexible body with granular media is less understood compared with viscous fluids partially due to…