Related papers: OriWheelBot: An origami-wheeled robot
This paper presents the design, analysis, and performance evaluation of an omnidirectional transformable wheel-leg robot called OmniWheg. We design a novel mechanism consisting of a separable omni-wheel and 4-bar linkages, allowing the…
Wireless millimeter-scale origami robots that can locomote in narrow spaces and morph their shapes have recently been explored with great potential for biomedical applications. Existing millimeter-scale origami devices usually require…
The capability of effectively moving on complex terrains such as sand and gravel can empower our robots to robustly operate in outdoor environments, and assist with critical tasks such as environment monitoring, search-and-rescue, and…
Limbless creatures can crawl on flat surfaces by deforming their bodies and interacting with asperities on the ground, offering a biological blueprint for designing efficient limbless robots. Inspired by this natural locomotion, we present…
Wheeled robots are highly efficient in human living environments. However, conventional wheeled designs, with their limited degrees of freedom and constraints in robot configuration, struggle to simultaneously achieve stability,…
The Mini Wheelbot is a balancing, reaction wheel unicycle robot designed as a testbed for learning-based control. It is an unstable system with highly nonlinear yaw dynamics, non-holonomic driving, and discrete contact switches in a small,…
Flexible robotics are capable of achieving various functionalities by shape morphing, benefiting from their compliant bodies and reconfigurable structures. Here we construct and study a class of origami springs generalized from the known…
Most conventional wheeled robots can only move in flat environments and simply divide their planar workspaces into free spaces and obstacles. Deeming obstacles as non-traversable significantly limits wheeled robots' mobility in real-world,…
We present an approach to overcoming challenges in dynamical dexterity for robots through tunable origami structures. Our work leverages a one-parameter family of flat sheet crease patterns that folds into origami bellows, whose axial…
In recent years, autonomous mobile platforms are finding an increasing range of applications in inspection or surveillance tasks, or to the transport of objects, in places such as smart warehouses, factories or hospitals. In these…
This paper presents the design of a new soft-rigid robotic platform, "GeoGami". We leverage origami surface capabilities to achieve shape contraction and to support locomotion with underactuated forms. A key challenge is that origami…
This paper presents a soft earthworm robot that is capable of both efficient locomotion and obstacle avoidance. The robot is designed to replicate the unique locomotion mechanisms of earthworms, which enable them to move through narrow and…
Wheeled robots are highly efficient in human living environments. However, conventional wheeled designs, limited by degrees of freedom, struggle to meet varying footprint needs and achieve omnidirectional mobility. This paper proposes a…
A mobility mechanism for robots to be used in tight spaces shared with people requires it to have a small footprint, to move omnidirectionally, as well as to be highly maneuverable. However, currently there exist few such mobility…
Locomotive robots that do not rely on electronics and/or electromagnetic components will open up new perspectives and applications for robotics. However, these robots usually involve complicated and tedious fabrication processes, limiting…
Robotic spacecraft have helped expand our reach for many planetary exploration missions. Most ground mobile planetary exploration robots use wheeled or modified wheeled platforms. Although extraordinarily successful at completing intended…
Origami structures have been widely explored in robotics due to their many potential advantages. Origami robots can be very compact, as well as cheap and efficient to produce. In particular, they can be constructed in a flat format using…
Combining off-the-shelf components with 3D-printing, the Wheelbot is a symmetric reaction wheel unicycle that can jump onto its wheels from any initial position. With non-holonomic and under-actuated dynamics, as well as two coupled…
Recent research on mobile robots has focused on increasing their adaptability to unpredictable and unstructured environments using soft materials and structures. However, the determination of key design parameters and control over these…
In this paper, we present a novel rolling, jumping robot. The robot consists of a driven pendulum mounted to a wheel in a compact, lightweight, 3D printed design. We show that by driving the pendulum to shift the robot's weight…