Related papers: Recent progress in the physical principles of dyna…

Terrestrial animals and robots are susceptible to flipping-over during rapid locomotion in complex terrains. However, small robots are less capable of self-righting from an upside-down orientation compared to small animals like insects.…

Animals and robots must right themselves after flipping over on the ground. The discoid cockroach pushes its wings against the ground in an attempt to dynamically self-right by a somersault. However, because this maneuver is strenuous, the…

Despite contending with constraints imposed by the environment, morphology, and physiology, animals move well by physically interactingwith the environment to use and transition between modes such as running, climbing, and self-righting. By…

Terrestrial animals often must self-right from an upside-down orientation on the ground to survive. Here, we compared self-righting strategies of the Madagascar hissing, American, and discoid cockroaches on a challenging flat, rigid,…

Many animals, modern aircraft, and underwater vehicles use streamlined body shapes that reduce fluid dynamic drag to achieve fast and effective locomotion in air and water. Similarly, numerous small terrestrial animals move through…

Effective locomotion in nature happens by transitioning across multiple modes (e.g., walk, run, climb). Despite this, far more mechanistic understanding of terrestrial locomotion has been on how to generate and stabilize around…

To traverse complex natural terrain, animals often transition between locomotor modes. It is well known that locomotor transitions can be induced by switching in neural control circuits or be driven by a need to minimize metabolic energetic…

To traverse complex three-dimensional terrainwith large obstacles, animals and robots must transition across different modes. However, the most mechanistic understanding of terrestrial locomotion concerns how to generate and stabilize…

Robots excel at avoiding obstacles but struggle to traverse complex 3-D terrain with cluttered large obstacles. By contrast, insects like cockroaches excel at doing so. Recent research in our lab elucidated how locomotor transitions emerge…

Randomness is common in biological and artificial systems, resulting either from stochasticity of the environment or noise in organisms or devices themselves. In locomotor control, randomness is typically considered a nuisance. For example,…

Centipede-like robots offer unique locomotion advantages due to their small cross-sectional area for accessing confined spaces, and their redundant legs enhance robustness in cluttered environments such as search-and-rescue and pipe…

Many applications require robots to move through complex 3-D terrain with large obstacles, such as self-driving, search and rescue, and extraterrestrial exploration. Although robots are already excellent at avoiding sparse obstacles, they…

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…

Centipede-like robots offer an effective and robust solution to navigation over complex terrain with minimal sensing. However, when climbing over obstacles, such multi-legged robots often elevate their center-of-mass into unstable…

Animals and robots exist in a physical world and must coordinate their bodies to achieve behavioral objectives. With recent developments in deep reinforcement learning, it is now possible for scientists and engineers to obtain sensorimotor…

Evolutionary robotics has aimed to optimize robot control and morphology to produce better and more robust robots. Most previous research only addresses optimization of control, and does this only in simulation. We have developed a…

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…

Legged robots must adapt their gait to navigate unpredictable environments, a challenge that animals master with ease. However, most deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approaches to quadruped locomotion rely on a fixed gait, limiting…

It is well known that animals can use neural and sensory feedback via vision, tactile sensing, and echolocation to negotiate obstacles. Similarly, most robots use deliberate or reactive planning to avoid obstacles, which relies on prior…

Physical reasoning is a core aspect of intelligence in animals and humans. A central question is what model should be used as a basis for reasoning. Existing work considered models ranging from intuitive physics and physical simulators to…