Related papers: OriWheelBot: An origami-wheeled robot

In both animals and robots, locomotion capabilities are determined by the physical structure of the system. The majority of legged animals and robots are bilaterally symmetric, which facilitates locomotion with consistent headings and…

Everting, soft growing vine robots benefit from reduced friction with their environment, which allows them to navigate challenging terrain. Vine robots can use air pouches attached to their sides for lateral steering. However, when all…

We propose a learning-based system for enabling quadrupedal robots to manipulate large, heavy objects using their whole body. Our system is based on a hierarchical control strategy that uses the deep latent variable embedding which captures…

This study examines a biology-inspired approach of using reconfigurable articulation to reduce the control requirement for soft robotic arms. We construct a robotic arm by assembling Kresling origami modules that exhibit predictable…

Dung beetles impressively coordinate their six legs simultaneously to effectively roll large dung balls. They are also capable of rolling dung balls varying in the weight on different terrains. The mechanisms underlying how their motor…

Robotic manipulators often face challenges in handling objects of different sizes and materials, limiting their effectiveness in practical applications. This issue is particularly pronounced when manipulating meter-scale objects or those…

Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…

For legged robots, aerial motions are the only option to overpass obstacles that cannot be circumvent with standard locomotion gaits. In these cases, the robot must perform a leap to either jump onto the obstacle or fly over it. However,…

Terrain adaptation is an essential capability for a ground robot to effectively traverse unstructured off-road terrain in real-world field environments such as forests. However, the expected robot behaviors generated by terrain adaptation…

Evolutionary algorithms offer great promise for the automatic design of robot bodies, tailoring them to specific environments or tasks. Most research is done on simplified models or virtual robots in physics simulators, which do not capture…

Ground robots require the crucial capability of traversing unstructured and unprepared terrains and avoiding obstacles to complete tasks in real-world robotics applications such as disaster response. When a robot operates in off-road field…

Planetary rovers operating in extraterrestrial environments often encounter significant mobility challenges due to varying terrain features such as gradients and granularity. While recent works in multimodal wheel design have explored…

Ants are six-legged insects that can carry loads ten times heavier than their body weight. Since having six-legs, they are intrinsically stable. They are powerful and can carry heavy loads. For these reasons, in this paper a new parallel…

Bristle-bots are legged robots that can be easily made out of a toothbrush head and a small vibrating engine. Despite their simple appearance, the mechanism enabling them to propel themselves by exploiting friction with the substrate is far…

Operating in environments too harsh or inaccessible for humans is one of the critical roles expected of robots. However, such environments often pose risks to electronic components as well. To overcome this, various approaches have been…

The heavy-load legged robot has strong load carrying capacity and can adapt to various unstructured terrains. But the large weight results in higher requirements for motion stability and environmental perception ability. In order to utilize…

This paper presents a novel modular robot system that can self-reconfigure to achieve omnidirectional movements for collaborative object transportation. Each robotic module is equipped with a steerable omni-wheel for navigation and is…

Legged robot locomotion on sand slopes is challenging due to the complex dynamics of granular media and how the lack of solid surfaces can hinder locomotion. A promising strategy, inspired by ghost crabs and other organisms in nature, is to…

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…

Origami and kirigami have emerged as potential tools for the design of mechanical metamaterials whose properties such as curvature, Poisson ratio, and existence of metastable states can be tuned using purely geometric criteria. A major…