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Impact mitigation is crucial to the stable locomotion of legged robots, especially in high-speed dynamic locomotion. This paper presents a leg locomotion system including the nonlinear active compliance control and the active impedance…
Robotic arms built from stiffness-adjustable, continuously bending segments serially connected with revolute joints have the ability to change their mechanical architecture and workspace, thus allowing high flexibility and adaptation to…
Fish in schooling formations navigate complex flow-fields replete with mechanical energy in the vortex wakes of their companions. Their schooling behaviour has been associated with evolutionary advantages including collective energy…
In the fields of robotics and biomechanics, the integration of elastic elements such as springs and tendons in legged systems has long been recognized for enabling energy-efficient locomotion. Yet, a significant challenge persists:…
The hydrodynamics of fish swimming depend on the interaction between the undulation of the body and the flapping of the caudal fin. This study develops a computational framework of a Jackfish-inspired swimmer with an independently mounted…
Compliance in actuation has been exploited to generate highly dynamic maneuvers such as throwing that take advantage of the potential energy stored in joint springs. However, the energy storage and release could not be well-timed yet. On…
This paper presents a novel methodology to model and optimize trajectories of a quadrupedal robot with spinal compliance to improve standing jump performance compared to quadrupeds with a rigid spine. We introduce an elastic model for a…
Aquatic organisms are known for their ability to generate efficient propulsion with low energy expenditure. While existing research has sought to leverage bio-inspired structures to reduce energy costs in underwater robotics, the crucial…
A major field of industrial robot applications deals with repetitive tasks that alternate between operating points. For these so-called pick-and-place operations, parallel kinematic manipulators (PKM) are frequently employed. These tasks…
Fish swim with flexible fins that stand in stark contrast to the rigid propulsors of engineered vehicles. Using numerical simulations of the dynamics of flow-structure interaction, we have found that dorso-ventral deformation in flexible…
Many swimmers, especially small to medium-sized animals, use intermittent locomotion that differs from continuous swimming of large species. This type of locomotion, called burst-and-coast, is often associated with an energetic advantage.…
Legged robots offer several advantages when navigating unstructured environments, but they often fall short of the efficiency achieved by wheeled robots. One promising strategy to improve their energy economy is to leverage their natural…
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…
Fish locomotion is enabled by fin rays-actively deformable boney rods, which manipulate the fin to facilitate complex interaction with surrounding water and enable propulsion. Replicating the performance and kinematics of the biological fin…
Fish display remarkable swimming capabilities through the coordinated interaction of the body and caudal fin, yet the potential role of a passively pitching tail in enhancing hydrodynamic performance remains unresolved. In this work, we…
Tidal and riverine hydrokinetic turbines offer promising solutions for renewable energy generation in aquatic environments. However, their ecological impact, especially on fish behavior, warrants a thorough investigation. This study…
We present OpenFish: an open source soft robotic fish which is optimized for speed and efficiency. The soft robotic fish uses a combination of an active and passive tail segment to accurately mimic the thunniform swimming mode. Through the…
In nature, many unicellular organisms are able to swim with the help of beating filaments, where local energy input leads to cooperative undulatory beating motion. Here, we investigate by employing reinforcement learning how undulatory…
Dynamic modeling has been capturing attention for its fundamentality in precise locomotion analyses and control of underwater robots. However, the existing researches have mainly focused on investigating two-dimensional motion of underwater…
We study a linear inviscid model of a passively flexible swimmer with distributed flexibility, calculating its propulsive performance and optimal distributions of flexibility. The frequencies of actuation and mean stiffness ratios we…