Related papers: Embodied Design for Enhanced Flipper-Based Locomot…

For rescue robots, flipper endows the robot with additional ability to pass through various terrain. Autonomous motion becomes more important. In recent work autonomy is done by either planning with several special states or based on…

A distinctive feature of quadrupeds that is integral to their locomotion is the tail. Tails serve many purposes in biological systems including propulsion, counterbalance, and stabilization while walking, running, climbing, or jumping.…

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…

Animals are capable of precise and agile locomotion using vision. Replicating this ability has been a long-standing goal in robotics. The traditional approach has been to decompose this problem into elevation mapping and foothold planning…

Recently, reinforcement learning has become a promising and polular solution for robot legged locomotion. Compared to model-based control, reinforcement learning based controllers can achieve better robustness against uncertainties of…

Robots built from soft materials can alter their shape and size in a particular profile. This shape-changing ability could be extremely helpful for rescue robots and those operating in unknown terrains and environments. In changing shape,…

Robots will become ubiquitously useful only when they can use few attempts to teach themselves to perform different tasks, even with complex bodies and in dynamical environments. Vertebrates, in fact, successfully use trial-and-error to…

The functional demands of robotic systems often require completing various tasks or behaviors under the effect of disturbances or uncertain environments. Of increasing interest is the autonomy for dynamic robots, such as multirotors, motor…

While most insect-inspired robots come with a simple tarsus such as a hemispherical foot tip, insect legs have complex tarsal structures and claws, which enable them to walk on complex terrain. Their sharp claws can smoothly attach and…

Modular robotics research has long been preoccupied with perfecting the modules themselves -- their actuation methods, connectors, controls, communication, and fabrication. This inward focus results, in part, from the complexity of the task…

Equipping active colloidal robots with intelligence such that they can efficiently navigate in unknown complex environments could dramatically impact their use in emerging applications like precision surgery and targeted drug delivery. Here…

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…

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…

Bipedal robots are a fascinating and advanced category of robots designed to mimic human form and locomotion. The development of the bipedal robots is a significant milestone in robotics. However, even the most advanced bipedal robots are…

Locomotion on granular slopes such as sand dunes remains a fundamental challenge for legged robots due to reduced shear strength and gravity-induced anisotropic yielding of granular media. Using a hexapedal robot on a tiltable granular bed,…

Untethered soft robots are essential for advancing the real-world deployment of soft robotic systems in diverse and multitasking environments. Inspired by soft-bodied inchworm, we present a fully untethered soft robot with a curved,…

Accurate traversability estimation is essential for safe and effective navigation of outdoor robots operating in complex environments. This paper introduces a novel experience-based method that allows robots to autonomously learn which…

Evolution and learning have historically been interrelated topics, and their interplay is attracting increased interest lately. The emerging new factor in this trend is morphological evolution, the evolution of physical forms within…

This study presents an emotion-aware navigation framework -- EmoBipedNav -- using deep reinforcement learning (DRL) for bipedal robots walking in socially interactive environments. The inherent locomotion constraints of bipedal robots…

Legged robots leverage ground contacts and the reaction forces they provide to achieve agile locomotion. However, uncertainty coupled with contact discontinuities can lead to failure, especially in real-world environments with unexpected…