Related papers: Highly agile flat swimming robot
Legged robots are typically in rigid contact with the environment at multiple locations, which add a degree of complexity to their control. We present a method to control the motion and a subset of the contact forces of a floating-base…
To autonomously collect soil in uncultivated terrain, robotic arms must distinguish between different amorphous materials and submerge themselves into the correct material. We develop a prototype that collects soil in heterogeneous terrain.…
Quantifying greenhouse-gases (GHG) in wetlands is critical for climate modeling and restoration assessment, yet manual sampling is labor-intensive, and time demanding. We present WetExplorer, an autonomous tracked robot that automates the…
Microorganisms often encounter strong confinement and complex hydrodynamic flows while navigating their habitats. Combining finite-element methods and stochastic simulations, we study the interplay of active transport and heterogeneous…
Robots such as autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and autonomous surface vehicles (ASVs) have been used for sensing and monitoring aquatic environments such as oceans and lakes. Environmental sampling is a challenging task because the…
In-pipe robots are promising solutions for condition assessment, leak detection, water quality monitoring in a variety of other tasks in pipeline networks. Smart navigation is an extremely challenging task for these robots as a result of…
Robots are becoming increasingly essential for traversing complex environments such as disaster areas, extraterrestrial terrains, and marine environments. Yet, their potential is often limited by mobility and adaptability constraints. In…
A key factor in the economic efficiency of satellites is their availability in orbit. Replacing standardized building blocks, such as empty fuel tanks or outdated electronic modules, could greatly extend the satellites' lifetime. This,…
Walkability is a key component of sustainable urban development. In walkability studies, collecting detailed pedestrian infrastructure data remains challenging due to the high costs and limited scalability of traditional methods. Sidewalk…
Humans manipulate various kinds of fluids in their everyday life: creating latte art, scooping floating objects from water, rolling an ice cream cone, etc. Using robots to augment or replace human labors in these daily settings remain as a…
Recently, the navigation of mobile robots in unknown environments has become a particularly significant research topic. Previous studies have primarily employed real-time environmental mapping using cameras and LiDAR, along with…
Robotic locomotion is often approached with the goal of maximizing robustness and reactivity by increasing motion control frequency. We challenge this intuitive notion by demonstrating robust and dynamic locomotion with a learned motion…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
Existing navigation systems mostly consider "success" when the robot reaches within 1m radius to a goal. This precision is insufficient for emerging applications where the robot needs to be positioned precisely relative to an object for…
Ants are six-legged insects that can carry loads ten times heavier than their body weight. Since having six-legs, they are intrinsically stable. They are powerful and can carry heavy loads. For these reasons, in this paper a new parallel…
Fish often travel in highly organized schools. One of the most quoted functions of these configurations is energy savings. Here, we verified the hypothesis and explored the mechanism through series of experiments on "schooling" robotic…
Pushing is a motion primitive useful to handle objects that are too large, too heavy, or too cluttered to be grasped. It is at the core of much of robotic manipulation, in particular when physical interaction is involved. It seems…
The capability of effectively moving on complex terrains such as sand and gravel can empower our robots to robustly operate in outdoor environments, and assist with critical tasks such as environment monitoring, search-and-rescue, and…
Sample Exploring the ocean environment holds profound significance in areas such as resource exploration and ecological protection. Underwater robots struggle with extreme water pressure and often cause noise and damage to the underwater…
In swarm robotics, just as for an animal swarm in Nature, one of the aims is to reach and maintain a desired configuration. One of the possibilities for the team, to reach this aim, is to see what its neighbours are doing. This approach…