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Biological lifeforms can heal, grow, adapt, and reproduce -- abilities essential for sustained survival and development. In contrast, robots today are primarily monolithic machines with limited ability to self-repair, physically develop, or…
Faced with strong demand for robots working in underwater pipeline environments, a novel underwater multi-model locomotion robot is designed and studied in this research. By mimicking the earthworm's metameric body, the robot is segmented…
Legged locomotion on flowing ground ({\em e.g.} granular media) is unlike locomotion on hard ground because feet experience both solid- and fluid-like forces during surface penetration. Recent bio-inspired legged robots display speed…
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…
Although wheeled robots have been predominant for planetary exploration, their geometry limits their capabilities when traveling over steep slopes, through rocky terrains, and in microgravity. Legged robots equipped with grippers are a…
Designing soft robots poses considerable challenges: automated design approaches may be particularly appealing in this field, as they promise to optimize complex multi-material machines with very little or no human intervention.…
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…
Exploring bodies of water on their surface allows robots to efficiently communicate and harvest energy from the sun. On the water surface, however, robots often face highly unstructured environments, cluttered with plant matter, animals,…
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…
We present the modeling, design, fabrication and feedback control of an earthworm-inspired soft robot capable of crawling on surfaces by actively manipulating the frictional force between its body and the surface. Earthworms are segmented…
In lunar and planetary exploration, legged robots have attracted significant attention as an alternative to conventional wheeled robots, which struggle to traverse rough and uneven terrain. To enable locomotion over highly irregular and…
Legged locomotion is commonly studied and expressed as a discrete set of gait patterns, like walk, trot, gallop, which are usually treated as given and pre-programmed in legged robots for efficient locomotion at different speeds. However,…
Legged robots need to be capable of walking on diverse terrain conditions. In this paper, we present a novel reinforcement learning framework for learning locomotion on non-rigid dynamic terrains. Specifically, our framework can generate…
The request for fast response and safe operation after natural and man-made disasters in urban environments has spurred the development of robotic systems designed to assist in search and rescue operations within complex rubble sites.…
Construction throughout history typically assumes that its blueprints and building blocks are pre-determined. However, recent work suggests that alternative approaches can enable new paradigms for structure formation. Aleatory…
Granular media (GM) present locomotor challenges for terrestrial and extraterrestrial devices because they can flow and solidify in response to localized intrusion of wheels, limbs, and bodies. While the development of airplanes and…
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 research focuses on developing reinforcement learning approaches for the locomotion generation of small-size quadruped robots. The rat robot NeRmo is employed as the experimental platform. Due to the constrained volume, small-size…
Soft robots have the ability to adapt to their environment, which makes them suitable for use in disaster areas and agricultural fields, where their mobility is constrained by complex terrain. One of the main challenges in developing soft…
Advances in planetary robotics have led to wheeled robots that have beamed back invaluable science data from the surface of the Moon and Mars. However, these large wheeled robots are unable to access rugged environments such as cliffs,…