Related papers: Fast Untethered Soft Robotic Crawler with Elastic …
We design an insect-sized rolling microrobot driven by continuously rotating wheels. It measures 18mm$\times$8mm$\times$8mm. There are 2 versions of the robot - a 96mg laser-powered one and a 130mg supercapacitor powered one. The robot can…
Continuum robots, made from flexible materials with continuous backbones, have several advantages over traditional rigid robots. Some of them are the ability to navigate through narrow or confined spaces, adapt to irregular or changing…
We present the design and implementation of HASTA (Hopper with Adjustable Stiffness for Terrain Adaptation), a vertical hopping robot with real-time tunable leg stiffness, aimed at optimizing energy efficiency across various ground profiles…
Soft robots have garnered significant attention due to their promising applications across various domains. A hallmark of these systems is their bilayer structure, where strain mismatch caused by differential expansion between layers…
Legged robots have shown remarkable advantages in navigating uneven terrain. However, realizing effective locomotion and manipulation tasks on quadruped robots is still challenging. In addition, object and terrain parameters are generally…
In this paper, we focus on the kangaroo, which has powerful legs capable of jumping and a soft and strong tail. To incorporate these unique structure into a robot for utilization, we propose a design method that takes into account both the…
Robust locomotion control depends on accurate state estimations. However, the sensors of most legged robots can only provide partial and noisy observations, making the estimation particularly challenging, especially for external states like…
Balancing oneself using the spine is a physiological alignment of the body posture in the most efficient manner by the muscular forces for mammals. For this reason, we can see many disabled quadruped animals can still stand or walk even…
Locomotion robots with active or passive compliance can show robustness to uncertain scenarios, which can be promising for agricultural, research and environmental industries. However, state estimation for these robots is challenging due to…
Robot grasping is subject to an inherent tradeoff: Grippers with a large span typically take a longer time to close, and fast grippers usually cover a small span. However, many practical applications of soft grippers require the ability to…
We developed a new class of soft locomotive robots that can self-assemble into a preprogrammed configuration and vary their stiffness afterward in a highly integrated, compact body using contracting-cord particle jamming (CCPJ). We…
Intrinsically elastic robots surpass their rigid counterparts in a range of different characteristics. By temporarily storing potential energy and subsequently converting it to kinetic energy, elastic robots are capable of highly dynamic…
Traditional robots have rigid links and structures that limit their ability to interact with the dynamics of their immediate environment. For example, conventional robot manipulators with rigid links can only manipulate objects using…
Although bipedal locomotion provides the ability to traverse unstructured environments, it requires careful planning and control to safely walk across without falling. This poses an integrated challenge for the robot to perceive, plan, and…
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…
Bio-inspired multi-joint snake robots offer the advantages of terrain adaptability due to their limbless structure and high flexibility. However, a series of dozens of motor units in typical multiple-joint snake robots results in a heavy…
Animals run robustly in diverse terrain. This locomotion robustness is puzzling because axon conduction velocity is limited to a few ten meters per second. If reflex loops deliver sensory information with significant delays, one would…
We propose reaching steps towards the real-time strain control of multiphysics, multiscale continuum soft robots. To study this problem fundamentally, we ground ourselves in a model-based control setting enabled by mathematically precise…
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…
Soft robots have struggled to support large forces and moments while also supporting their own weight against gravity. This limits their ability to reach certain configurations necessary for tasks such as inspection and pushing objects up.…