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Snake robots have been studied for decades with the aim of achieving biological snakes' fluent locomotion. Yet, as of today, their locomotion remains far from that of the biological snakes. Our recent study suggested that snake locomotion…
Synthesizing a stable gait that enables a quadruped robot to climb stairs is the focus of this paper. To this end, first a stable transition from initial to desired configuration is made based on the minimum number of steps and maximum use…
Bipedal walking is one of the most important hallmarks of human that robots have been trying to mimic for many decades. Although previous control methodologies have achieved robot walking on some terrains, there is a need for a framework…
Snake robots have the potential to maneuver through tightly packed and complex environments. One challenge in enabling them to do so is the complexity in determining how to coordinate their many degrees-of-freedom to create purposeful…
Bioinspired snake robotics has been a highly active area of research over the years and resulted in many prototypes. Much of these prototypes takes the form of serially jointed-rigid bodies. The emergence of soft robotics contributed to a…
Animals are capable of precise and agile locomotion using vision. Replicating this ability has been a long-standing goal in robotics. The traditional approach has been to decompose this problem into elevation mapping and foothold planning…
Nature suggests that exploiting the elasticities and natural dynamics of robotic systems could increase their locomotion efficiency. Prior work on elastic snake robots supports this hypothesis, but has not fully exploited the nonlinear…
Orb-weaving spiders detect prey on a web using vibration sensors at leg joints. They often dynamically crouch their legs during prey sensing, likely an active sensing strategy. However, how leg crouching enhances sensing is poorly…
We present a reinforcement learning framework for quadrupedal wall-climbing locomotion that explicitly addresses uncertainty in magnetic foot adhesion. A physics-based adhesion model of a quadrupedal magnetic climbing robot is incorporated…
Exploring and navigating in extreme environments, such as caves, oceans, and planetary bodies, are often too hazardous for humans, and as such, robots are possible surrogates. These robots are met with significant locomotion challenges that…
Similar to their counterparts in nature, the flexible bodies of snake-like robots enhance their movement capability and adaptability in diverse environments. However, this flexibility corresponds to a complex control task involving highly…
Although commonly associated with limbless animals like snakes and fish, multi-legged organisms like centipedes also utilize undulatory locomotion. Whether these undulations are actively reinforced or resisted by the axial musculature…
Robust and energy-efficient bipedal locomotion in robotics is still a challenging topic. In order to address issues in this field, we can take inspiration from nature, by studying human locomotion. The Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP)…
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…
Locomotion has seen dramatic progress for walking or running across challenging terrains. However, robotic quadrupeds are still far behind their biological counterparts, such as dogs, which display a variety of agile skills and can use the…
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
Snakes can bend their elongate bodies in various forms to traverse various environments. We understand how snakes use lateral bending to push against asperities on flat ground for propulsion, and snake robots can do so effectively. However,…
In nature, legged animals have developed the ability to adapt to challenging terrains through perception, allowing them to plan safe body and foot trajectories in advance, which leads to safe and energy-efficient locomotion. Inspired by…
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…
Snake robots, comprised of sequentially connected joint actuators, have recently gained increasing attention in the industrial field, like life detection in narrow space. Such robots can navigate through the complex environment via the…