Related papers: Copebot: Underwater soft robot with copepod-like l…

Bio-inspired soft robots have already shown the ability to handle uncertainty and adapt to unstructured environments. However, their availability is partially restricted by time-consuming, costly and highly supervised design-fabrication…

Bio-inspired vehicles are currently leading the way in the quest to produce a vehicle capable of flight and underwater navigation. However, a fully functional vehicle has not yet been realized. We present the first fully functional vehicle…

Quadrupedal animals can perform agile and playful tasks while interacting with real-world objects. For instance, a trained dog can track and catch a flying frisbee before it touches the ground, while a cat left alone at home may leap to…

Research on the co-optimization of soft robotic design and control requires rapid means for real-world validation. Existing creation pipelines do not allow for the swift prototyping of soft robots to quickly test various design…

Locomotion by shape changes (spermatozoon swimming, snake slithering, bird flapping) or gas expulsion (rocket firing) is assumed to require environmental interaction, due to conservation of momentum. As first noted in (Wisdom, 2003) and…

A new fluid-driven soft robot hand in this study uses the idea of the bionics and has the anthropomorphic form, which is oriented to the flexible grasp function. The soft robot hand is composed of a new kind of multi-freedom soft finger 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…

Soft robots have drawn great interest due to their ability to take on a rich range of shapes and motions, compared to traditional rigid robots. However, the motions, and underlying statics and dynamics, pose significant challenges to…

A key ecological parameter for planktonic copepods studies is their interspecies encounter rate which is driven by their behaviour and is strongly influenced by turbulence of the surrounding environment. A distinctive feature of copepods…

All-around, real-time navigation and sensing across the water environments by miniature soft robotics are promising, for their merits of small size, high agility and good compliance to the unstructured surroundings. In this paper, we…

Soft pneumatic legged robots show promise in their ability to traverse a range of different types of terrain, including natural unstructured terrain met in applications like precision agriculture. They can adapt their body morphology to the…

Flying robots, such as quadrotor drones, offer new possibilities for human-robot interaction but often pose safety risks due to fast-spinning propellers, rigid structures, and noise. In contrast, lighter-than-air flapping-wing robots,…

Grip, walk, crawl, and jump. Soft robots are integrated functional structures composed of compliant mechanisms, whose activity spans various industrial applications such as surgery, healthcare, surveillance, and even planetary exploration.…

Metachronal locomotion is a widespread swimming mode used by aquatic swarming organisms to achieve performance and maneuverability in the intermediate Reynolds number regime. Our understanding of the mechanisms driving these abilities is…

Underwater robotic manipulation faces significant challenges due to complex fluid dynamics and unstructured environments, causing most manipulation systems to rely heavily on human teleoperation. In this paper, we introduce AquaBot, a fully…

Soft robots achieve functionality through tight coupling among geometry, material composition, and actuation. As a result, effective design optimization requires these three aspects to be considered jointly rather than in isolation. This…

Soft robots offer adaptability and safe interaction with complex environments. Rapid prototyping kits that allow soft robots to be assembled easily will allow different geometries to be explored quickly to suit different environments or to…

Robot feet are crucial for maintaining dynamic stability and propelling the body during walking, especially on uneven terrains. Traditionally, robot feet were mostly designed as flat and stiff pieces of metal, which meets its limitations…

In real-world field operations, aerial grasping systems face significant challenges in dynamic environments due to strong winds, shifting surfaces, and the need to handle heavy loads. Particularly when dealing with heavy objects, the…

Triphibious robots capable of multi-domain motion and cross-domain transitions are promising to handle complex tasks across diverse environments. However, existing designs primarily focus on dual-mode platforms, and some designs suffer from…