Related papers: HISSbot: Sidewinding with a Soft Snake Robot
A wide range of microorganisms, e.g. bacteria, propel themselves by rotation of soft helical tails, also known as flagella. Due to the small size of these organisms, viscous forces overwhelm inertial effects and the flow is at low Reynolds…
Soft robotic manipulators provide numerous advantages over conventional rigid manipulators in fragile environments such as the marine environment. However, developing analytic inverse models necessary for shape, motion, and force control of…
Experiments using large numbers of miniature swarm robots are desirable to teach, study, and test multi-robot and swarm intelligence algorithms and their applications. To realize the full potential of a swarm robot, it should be capable of…
Soft growing robots, are a type of robots that are designed to move and adapt to their environment in a similar way to how plants grow and move with potential applications where they could be used to navigate through tight spaces, dangerous…
This research focuses on enabling Northeastern University's Husky, a multi-modal quadrupedal robot, to navigate narrow paths akin to various animals in nature. The Husky is equipped with thrusters to stabilize its body during dynamic…
Animals, such as birds, widely use multi-modal locomotion by combining legged and aerial mobility with dominant inertial effects. The robotic biomimicry of this multi-modal locomotion feat can yield ultra-flexible systems in terms of their…
Designing an in-pipe climbing robot that manipulates sharp gears to study complex line relationships. Traditional rolling/happening pipe climbing robots tend to slide when exploring pipe curves. The proposed gearbox connects to the farthest…
Soft robots exhibit inherent compliance and safety, which makes them particularly suitable for applications requiring direct physical interaction with humans, such as surgical procedures. However, their nonlinear and hysteretic behavior,…
Soft robots offer a frontier in robotics with enormous potential for safe human-robot interaction and agility in uncertain environments. A stepping stone towards unlocking their potential is a control theory tailored to soft robotics,…
Classical snake robot control leverages mimicking snake-like gaits tuned for specific environments. However, to operate adaptively in unstructured environments, gait generation must be dynamically scheduled. In this work, we present a…
Soft robots are intrinsically capable of adapting to different environments by changing their shape in response to interaction forces with the environment. However, sensing and feedback are still required for higher level decisions and…
Snakes and their bio-inspired robot counterparts have demonstrated locomotion on a wide range of terrains. However, dynamic vertical climbing is one locomotion strategy that has received little attention in the existing snake robotics…
We present SMORS, the first Soft fully actuated MultirOtoR System for multimodal locomotion. Unlike conventional hexarotors, SMORS is equipped with three rigid and three continuously soft arms, with each arm hosting a propeller. We create a…
Soft robots promise inherent safety via their material compliance for seamless interactions with humans or delicate environments. Yet, their development is challenging because it requires integrating materials, geometry, actuation, 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…
Multi-legged mobile robots possess high mobility performance in rough terrain environments, stemming from their high postural stability, joint flexibility, and the redundancy provided by multiple legs. In prior research on navigating…
Sprawling locomotion in vertebrates, particularly salamanders, demonstrates how body undulation and spinal mobility enhance stability, maneuverability, and adaptability across complex terrains. While prior work has separately explored…
Contact-rich problems, such as snake robot locomotion, offer unexplored yet rich opportunities for optimization-based trajectory and acyclic contact planning. So far, a substantial body of control research has focused on emulating snake…
Soft everting robots present significant advantages over traditional rigid robots, including enhanced dexterity, improved environmental interaction, and safe navigation in unpredictable environments. While soft everting robots have been…
This work introduces a novel approach for Titan exploration based on soft morphing aerial robots leveraging the use of flexible adaptive materials. The controlled deformation of the multirotor arms, actuated by a combination of a pneumatic…