Related papers: Geometric Static Modeling Framework for Piecewise-…
Tendon-driven continuum robots (TDCRs), with their flexible backbones, offer the advantage of being used for navigating complex, cluttered environments. However, to do so, they typically require multiple segments, often leading to complex…
Functional structures from across the engineered and biological world combine rigid elements such as bones and columns with flexible ones such as cables, fibers and membranes. These structures are known loosely as tensegrities, since these…
In this article a multi-segmented planar tensegrity mechanism was presented. This mechanism has a three-segment structure with each segment residing on top of another. The size of the segments may decrease proportionally from base to top,…
Tensegrity structures are becoming widely used in robotics, such as continuously bending soft manipulators and mobile robots to explore unknown and uneven environments dynamically. Estimating their shape, which is the foundation of their…
Tensegrity structures have been extensively studied over the last years due to their potential applications in modern engineering like metamaterials, deployable structures, planetary lander modules, etc. Many of the form-finding methods…
Curved-sided hexagrams with multiple equilibrium states have great potential in engineering applications such as foldable architectures, deployable aerospace structures, and shape-morphing soft robots. In Part I, the classical stability…
Tensegrity structures are lightweight, can undergo large deformations, and have outstanding robustness capabilities. These unique properties inspired roboticists to investigate their use. However, the morphological design, control,…
Discrete and periodic contact switching is a key characteristic of steady-state legged locomotion. This paper introduces a framework for modeling and analyzing this contact-switching behavior through the framework of geometric mechanics on…
Biomimicry has played a pivotal role in robotics. In contrast to rigid robots, bio-inspired robots exhibit an inherent compliance, facilitating versatile movements and operations in constrained spaces. The robot implementation in…
In this paper, a flexible tether-net system is applied to capture the space debris and a numerical framework is established to explore its nonlinear dynamic behaviors, which comprises four principal phases: folding, spreading, contacting,…
Path planning for multiple tethered robots is a challenging problem due to the complex interactions among the cables and the possibility of severe entanglements. Previous works on this problem either consider idealistic cable models or…
Tensegrity robots, composed of rigid rods connected by elastic cables, have a number of unique properties that make them appealing for use as planetary exploration rovers. However, control of tensegrity robots remains a difficult problem…
Hyper-redundant robots offer high dexterity, making them good at operating in confined and unstructured environments. To extend the reachable workspace, we built a multi-segment flexible rack actuated planar robot. However, the compliance…
We propose an efficient nonlinear readout scheme for entangled non-Gaussian spin states (ENGSs) based on the intrinsic quasi-cyclic dynamics of interacting spin-1/2 systems. We focus on two well-known spin models of twist-and-turn (TNT) and…
Legged robot research is presently focused on bipedal or quadrupedal robots, despite capabilities to build robots with many more legs to potentially improve locomotion performance. This imbalance is not necessarily due to hardware…
This paper studies the multi-robot reliable navigation problem in uncertain topological networks, which aims at maximizing the robot team's on-time arrival probabilities in the face of road network uncertainties. The uncertainty in these…
Soft robotics holds tremendous potential for various applications, especially in unstructured environments such as search and rescue operations. However, the lack of autonomy and teleoperability, limited capabilities, absence of gait…
In recent years, the study of topologically non-trivial structures in one-dimensional models has been dominated by the Su--Schrieffer--Heeger model due to its simplicity in design and its ability to support edge states with robustness to…
This paper tackles the problem of robots collaboratively towing a load with cables to a specified goal location while avoiding collisions in real time. The introduction of cables (as opposed to rigid links) enables the robotic team to…
Cosserat rod theory is the popular approach to modeling ferromagnetic soft robots as 1-Dimensional (1D) slender structures in most applications, such as biomedical. However, recent soft robots designed for locomotion and manipulation often…