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Climate change, invasive species and human activities are currently damaging the world's coral reefs at unprecedented rates, threatening their vast biodiversity and fisheries, and reducing coastal protection. Solving this vast challenge…
Wheeled bipedal robots (WBRs) have the capability to execute agile and versatile locomotion tasks. This paper focuses on improving the dynamic performance of WBRs through innovations in both hardware and software development. Inspired by…
Advanced robotic manipulation of deformable, volumetric objects remains one of the greatest challenges due to their pliancy, frailness, variability, and uncertainties during interaction. Motivated by these challenges, this article…
High-performance closed-loop control of truly soft continuum manipulators has remained elusive. Experimental demonstrations have largely relied on sufficiently stiff, piecewise architectures in which each actuated segment behaves as a…
Oscillations of flagella and cilia play an important role in biology, which motivates the idea of functional mimicry as part of bio-inspired applications. Nevertheless, it still remains challenging to drive their artificial counterparts to…
We design and test an octopus-inspired flexible hull robot that demonstrates outstanding fast-starting performance. The robot is hyper-inflated with water, and then rapidly deflates to expel the fluid so as to power the escape maneuver.…
This study deals with the optimisation of hybrid composite drive shafts operating at subcritical or supercritical speeds, using a genetic algorithm. A formulation for the flexural vibrations of a composite drive shaft mounted on…
Reconfigurable robots are at the forefront of robotics innovation due to their unmatched versatility and adaptability in addressing various tasks through collaborative operations. This paper explores the design and implementation of a novel…
Flagellated microorganisms can swim at low Reynolds numbers and adapt to changes in their environment. Specifically, the flagella can switch their shapes or modes through gene expression. In the past decade, efforts have been made to…
Swimming microrobots are increasingly developed with complex materials and dynamic shapes and are expected to operate in complex environments in which the system dynamics are difficult to model and positional control of the microrobot is…
Wearable and legged robot designers face multiple challenges when choosing actuation. Traditional fully actuated designs using electric motors are multifunctional but oversized and inefficient for bearing conservative loads and for being…
Treatment for high-grade precancerous cervical lesions and early-stage cancers, mainly affecting women of reproductive age, often involves fertility-sparing treatment methods. Commonly used local treatments for cervical precancers have…
This paper presents the first steps toward a soft dolphin robot using a bio-inspired approach to mimic dolphin flexibility. The current dolphin robot uses a minimalist approach, with only two actuated cable-driven degrees of freedom…
This paper presents the design and experimental validation of a bio-inspired soft aquatic robot, the DilBot, which uses a bistable shape memory alloy-driven engine for pulse-jet locomotion. Drawing inspiration from the efficient swimming…
Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…
In nature, animals often need to move/manipulate objects comparable in weight/size to their own bodies. Compared to grasping and carrying, pushing provides a more straightforward and efficient non-prehensile manipulation strategy, avoiding…
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…
Cable-driven continuum robots offer high flexibility and lightweight design, making them well-suited for tasks in constrained and unstructured environments. However, prolonged use can induce mechanical fatigue from plastic deformation and…
Bio-inspired soft robots have already shown the ability to handle uncertainty and adapt to unstructured environments. However, their availability is partially restricted by time-consuming, costly and highly supervised design-fabrication…
We investigate the dynamics of a magnetoelastic robot with a dipolar magnetic head and a slender elastic body as it performs undulatory strokes and burrows through water-saturated granular beds. The robot is actuated by an oscillating…