Related papers: PCBot: a Minimalist Robot Designed for Swarm Appli…
Developing soft circuits from individual soft logic gates poses a unique challenge: with increasing numbers of logic gates, the design and implementation of circuits leads to inefficiencies due to mathematically unoptimized circuits and…
Inspired by a couple of simple organisms without eyes, neither ears. This paper presents a novel hybrid bionic robot, called "particle robot", which mix a macro-organism and a micro-organism in the same robot. On one hand, an interesting…
Rigid-bodied robots often lack compliance needed to adapt to unstructured environments, while fully soft robots, though highly adaptable, struggle with scalability and load capacity. In nature, musculoskeletal systems balance strength and…
True microrobots, in contrast with externally controlled microparticles, must harvest or carry their own source of energy, as well as their own (preferably programmable) microcontroller of actuators for locomotion, using information…
Synthetic active collectives, composed of many nonliving individuals capable of cooperative changes in group shape and dynamics, hold promise for practical applications and for the elucidation of guiding principles of natural collectives.…
Many robots are not equipped with a manipulator and many objects are not suitable for prehensile manipulation (such as large boxes and cylinders). In these cases, pushing is a simple yet effective non-prehensile skill for robots to interact…
This paper describes the process and challenges behind the design and development of a micro-gravity enabling aerial robot. The vehicle, designed to provide at minimum 4 seconds of micro-gravity at an accuracy of .001 g's, is designed with…
We present a decentralized algorithm to achieve segregation into an arbitrary number of groups with swarms of autonomous robots. The distinguishing feature of our approach is in the minimalistic assumptions on which it is based.…
Cyborg insects refer to hybrid robots that integrate living insects with miniature electronic controllers to enable robotic-like programmable control. These creatures exhibit advantages over conventional robots in adaption to complex…
This paper investigates how a novel paradigm called group-control can be effectively used for motion planning for microrobot swarms in a global field. We prove that Small-Time Local Controllability (STLC) in robot positions is achievable…
Soft robots have drawn significant attention recently for their ability to achieve rich shapes when interacting with complex environments. However, their elasticity and flexibility compared to rigid robots also pose significant challenges…
Soft robotics has emerged as a promising technology that holds great potential for various application areas. This is due to soft materials unique properties, including flexibility, safety, and shock absorption, among others. Despite many…
In nature, a variety of limbless locomotion patterns flourish from the small or basic life form (Escherichia coli, the amoeba, etc.) to the large or intelligent creatures (e.g., slugs, starfishes, earthworms, octopuses, jellyfishes, and…
Large assemblies of extremely simple robots capable only of basic motion activities (like propelling forward or self-rotating) are often applied to study swarming behavior or implement various phenomena characteristic of active matter…
Gait generation for soft robots is challenging due to the nonlinear dynamics and high dimensional input spaces of soft actuators. Limitations in soft robotic control and perception force researchers to hand-craft open loop controllers for…
Current robots are either expensive or make significant compromises on sensory richness, computational power, and communication capabilities. We propose to leverage smartphones to equip robots with extensive sensor suites, powerful…
In this research report details of design of a miniature wheel arrangement are presented. This miniature wheel arrangement is essentially a direction control mechanism intended for use on a mobile robot platform or base. The design is a…
Miniature locomotion robots with the ability to navigate confined environments show great promise for a wide range of tasks, including search and rescue operations. Soft miniature locomotion robots, as a burgeoning field, have attracted…
A key requirement in robotics is the ability to simultaneously self-localize and map a previously unknown environment, relying primarily on onboard sensing and computation. Achieving fully onboard accurate simultaneous localization and…
To increase the awareness and impact, soft robotics needs to go beyond the lab environment and should be readily accessible to those even with no robotic expertise. However, most prevailing manufacturing methodologies require either…