Related papers: HISSbot: Sidewinding with a Soft Snake Robot
This paper introduces a novel approach for modeling the dynamics of soft robots, utilizing a differentiable filter architecture. The proposed approach enables end-to-end training to learn system dynamics, noise characteristics, and temporal…
Modular soft robots combine the strengths of two traditionally separate areas of robotics. As modular robots, they can show robustness to individual failure and reconfigurability; as soft robots, they can deform and undergo large shape…
This paper designs a new spherical robot structure capable of supporting high-speed motion at up to 10 m/s. Building upon a single-pendulum-driven spherical robot, the design incorporates a momentum wheel with an axis aligned with the…
Terrestrial animals and robots are susceptible to flipping-over during rapid locomotion in complex terrains. However, small robots are less capable of self-righting from an upside-down orientation compared to small animals like insects.…
This paper presents design and control innovations of wearable robots that tackle two barriers to widespread adoption of powered exoskeletons, namely restriction of human movement and versatile control of wearable co-robot systems. First,…
Flying animals, such as bats, fly through their fluidic environment as they create air jets and form wake structures downstream of their flight path. Bats, in particular, dynamically morph their highly flexible and dexterous armwing to…
Recent advances in learned control, large-scale simulation, and generative models have accelerated progress toward general-purpose robotic controllers, yet the field still lacks platforms suitable for safe, expressive, long-term deployment…
Bio-inspired walking hexapod robots are a relatively young branch in robotics in both state of the art and applications. Despite their high degree of flexibility and adaptability derived by their redundant design, the research field that…
We determine analytically the form of optimal snake locomotion when the coefficient of transverse friction is large, the typical regime for biological and robotic snakes. We find that the optimal snake motion is a retrograde traveling wave,…
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…
This study explores the dynamics of asymmetrical bounding gaits in quadrupedal robots, focusing on the integration of torso pitching and hip motion to enhance speed and stability. Traditional control strategies often enforce a fixed…
Locomotion on granular slopes such as sand dunes remains a fundamental challenge for legged robots due to reduced shear strength and gravity-induced anisotropic yielding of granular media. Using a hexapedal robot on a tiltable granular bed,…
Soft robots offer unmatched adaptability and safety in unstructured environments, yet their compliant, high-dimensional, and nonlinear dynamics make modeling for control notoriously difficult. Existing data-driven approaches often fail 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…
Despite a significant proportion of the Earth being covered in water, exploration of what lies below has been limited due to the challenges and difficulties inherent in the process. Current state of the art robots such as Remotely Operated…
Despite recent advances in robust locomotion, bipedal robots operating in the real world remain at risk of falling. While most research focuses on preventing such events, we instead concentrate on the phenomenon of falling itself.…
Gaits engineered for snake-like robots to rotate in-place instrumentally fill a gap in the set of locomotive gaits that have traditionally prioritized translation. This paper designs a Turn-in-Place gait and demonstrates the ability of a…
Forthcoming applications concerning humanoid robots may involve physical interaction between the robot and a dynamic environment. In such scenario, classical balancing and walking controllers that neglect the environment dynamics may not be…
As a single-track mobile platform, bikebot (i.e., bicycle-based robot) has attractive navigation capability to pass through narrow, off-road terrain with high-speed and high-energy efficiency. However, running crossing step-like obstacles…
To design a general-purpose assembly robot system that can handle objects of various shapes, we propose a soft jig that fits to the shapes of assembly parts. The functionality of the soft jig is based on a jamming gripper developed in the…