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The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) serves as an important model organism in a wide variety of biological studies. In this paper we introduce a pipeline for automated analysis of C. elegans imagery for the purpose of studying…
Soft robots are distinguished by their flexibility and adaptability, allowing them to perform nearly impossible tasks for rigid robots. However, controlling their behavior is challenging due to their nonlinear material response and infinite…
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…
The dynamics of complex systems generally include high-dimensional, non-stationary and non-linear behavior, all of which pose fundamental challenges to quantitative understanding. To address these difficulties we detail a new approach based…
The development of versatile robots capable of traversing challenging and irregular environments is of increasing interest in the field of robotics, and metameric robots have been identified as a promising solution due to their slender,…
This paper presents AquaMILR+, an untethered limbless robot designed for agile navigation in complex aquatic environments. The robot features a bilateral actuation mechanism that models musculoskeletal actuation in many anguilliform…
Worm-inspired robots provide an effective locomotion strategy for constrained environments by combining cyclic body deformation with alternating anchoring. For compliant robots, however, the interaction between deformable anchoring…
Robots still struggle to dynamically traverse complex 3-D terrain with many large obstacles, an ability required for many critical applications. Body-obstacle interaction is often inevitable and induces perturbation and uncertainty in…
Learning controllers that reproduce legged locomotion in nature has been a long-time goal in robotics and computer graphics. While yielding promising results, recent approaches are not yet flexible enough to be applicable to legged systems…
Physically intelligent micro-robotic systems exploit information embedded in micro-robots, their colloidal cargo, and their milieu to interact, assemble and form functional structures. Nonlinear anisotropic fluids like nematic liquid…
Humans' ability to smoothly switch between locomotion and manipulation is a remarkable feature of sensorimotor coordination. Leaning and replication of such human-like strategies can lead to the development of more sophisticated robots…
Limbless robots have the potential to maneuver through cluttered environments that conventional robots cannot traverse. As illustrated in their biological counterparts such as snakes and nematodes, limbless locomotors can benefit from…
Despite the progress in legged robotic locomotion, autonomous navigation in unknown environments remains an open problem. Ideally, the navigation system utilizes the full potential of the robots' locomotion capabilities while operating…
Humans possess delicate dynamic balance mechanisms that enable them to maintain stability across diverse terrains and under extreme conditions. However, despite significant advances recently, existing locomotion algorithms for humanoid…
This paper presents a new learning framework that leverages the knowledge from imitation learning, deep reinforcement learning, and control theories to achieve human-style locomotion that is natural, dynamic, and robust for humanoids. We…
C. elegans is commonly used in neuroscience for behaviour analysis because of it's compact nervous system with well-described connectivity. Localizing the animal and distinguishing between its head and tail are important tasks to track the…
Locomotion is typically studied either in continuous media where bodies and legs experience forces generated by the flowing medium, or on solid substrates dominated by friction. In the former, centralized coordination is believed to…
Humans excel at robust bipedal walking in complex natural environments. In each step, they adequately tune the interaction of biomechanical muscle dynamics and neuronal signals to be robust against uncertainties in ground conditions.…
Legged robots have significant potential to operate in highly unstructured environments. The design of locomotion control is, however, still challenging. Currently, controllers must be either manually designed for specific robots and tasks,…
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…