Related papers: Toward the smooth mesh climbing of a miniature rob…
While most insect-inspired robots come with a simple tarsus such as a hemispherical foot tip, insect legs have complex tarsal structures and claws, which enable them to walk on complex terrain. Their sharp claws can smoothly attach and…
Climbing Robots are being developed for applications ranging from cleaning to the inspection of difficult to reach constructions. Climbing robots should be capable of carrying a light payload and climbing on vertical surfaces with ability…
Limbless creatures can crawl on flat surfaces by deforming their bodies and interacting with asperities on the ground, offering a biological blueprint for designing efficient limbless robots. Inspired by this natural locomotion, we present…
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…
Modern climbing robots have risen to great heights, but mechanisms meant to scale cliffs often locomote slowly and over-cautiously on level ground. Here we introduce T-RHex, an iteration on the classic cockroach-inspired hexapod that has…
Advances in planetary robotics have led to wheeled robots that have beamed back invaluable science data from the surface of the Moon and Mars. However, these large wheeled robots are unable to access rugged environments such as cliffs,…
Miniature locomotion robots with the ability to navigate confined environments show great promise for a wide range of tasks, including search and rescue operations. Soft miniature locomotion robots, as a burgeoning field, have attracted…
We present the modeling, design, fabrication and feedback control of an earthworm-inspired soft robot capable of crawling on surfaces by actively manipulating the frictional force between its body and the surface. Earthworms are segmented…
In nature, a variety of limbless locomotion patterns flourish from the small or basic life form (Escherichia coli, the amoeba, etc.) to the large or intelligent creatures (e.g., slugs, starfishes, earthworms, octopuses, jellyfishes, and…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
Although wheeled robots have been predominant for planetary exploration, their geometry limits their capabilities when traveling over steep slopes, through rocky terrains, and in microgravity. Legged robots equipped with grippers are a…
Robots excel at avoiding obstacles but struggle to traverse complex 3-D terrain with cluttered large obstacles. By contrast, insects like cockroaches excel at doing so. Recent research in our lab elucidated how locomotor transitions emerge…
Climbing robots hold significant promise for applications such as industrial inspection and maintenance, particularly in hazardous or hard-to-reach environments. This paper describes the quadrupedal climbing robot Magnecko, developed with…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
A hover-capable insect-inspired flying robot that can remain long in the air has shown its potential use for both confined indoor and outdoor applications to complete assigned tasks. In this letter, we report improvements in the flight…
Exploration of extreme environments, including caves, canyons and cliffs on low-gravity surfaces such as the Moon, Mars and asteroids can provide insight into the geological history of the solar system, origins of water, life and prospect…
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…
Small-scale robots hold great potential for targeted cargo delivery in minimally-inv asive medicine. However, current robots often face challenges to locomote efficiently on slip pery biological tissue surfaces, especially when loaded with…
This paper presents a soft earthworm robot that is capable of both efficient locomotion and obstacle avoidance. The robot is designed to replicate the unique locomotion mechanisms of earthworms, which enable them to move through narrow and…
Active systems of self-propelled agents, e.g., birds, fish, and bacteria, can organize their collective motion into myriad autonomous behaviors. Ubiquitous in nature and across length scales, such phenomena are also amenable to artificial…