Related papers: Physical synchronization of soft self-oscillating …
Locomotion is typically studied either in continuous media where bodies and legs experience forces generated by the flowing medium, or on solid substrates dominated by friction. In the former, centralized coordination is believed to…
Jumping is an efficient locomotion strategy to traverse cluttered, uneven, or unstable environments in nature, yet replicating continuous, autonomous leaping in soft robots remains challenging due to limited energy storage and reliance on…
Quadrupeds transition spontaneously to various gait patterns (e.g., walk, trot, pace, gallop) in response to the locomotion speed. The generation of these gait patterns has been the subject of debate for a long time. We propose a coupled…
Although commonly associated with limbless animals like snakes and fish, multi-legged organisms like centipedes also utilize undulatory locomotion. Whether these undulations are actively reinforced or resisted by the axial musculature…
This study explores the dynamics of asymmetrical bounding gaits in quadrupedal robots, focusing on the integration of torso pitching and hip motion to enhance speed and stability. Traditional control strategies often enforce a fixed…
Balancing oneself using the spine is a physiological alignment of the body posture in the most efficient manner by the muscular forces for mammals. For this reason, we can see many disabled quadruped animals can still stand or walk even…
Locomotion may be induced on three levels. On a classical level, actuators and limbs follow the sequence of open-loop top-down control signals they receive. Limbs may move alternatively on their own, which implies that interlimb…
Although typically possessing four limbs and short bodies, lizards have evolved a diversity of body plans, from short-bodied and fully-limbed to elongate and nearly limbless. Such diversity in body morphology is hypothesized as adaptations…
Animals locomote for various reasons: to search for food, find suitable habitat, pursue prey, escape from predators, or seek a mate. The grand scale of biodiversity contributes to the great locomotory design and mode diversity. Various…
Spontaneous synchronization is a general phenomenon in which a large population of coupled oscillators of diverse natural frequencies self-organize to operate in unison. The phenomenon occurs in physical and biological systems over a wide…
Snakes' bodies are covered in scales that make it easier to slide in some directions than in others. This frictional anisotropy allows for sliding locomotion with an undulatory gait, one of the most common for snakes. Isotropic friction is…
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…
Multiple organs in a living system respond to environmental changes, and the signals from the organs regulate the physiological environment. Inspired by this biological feedback, we propose a simple autonomous system of active rotators to…
Sidewinding, a locomotion strategy characterized by the coordination of lateral and vertical body undulations, is frequently observed in rattlesnakes and has been successfully reconstructed by limbless robotic systems for effective movement…
We present a locomotion mechanism that uses the stick-slip transition of a soft passive structure with an internal mechanical resonance. The structure is harmonically driven by a global vertical shaking and, because of its resonance…
Animals run robustly in diverse terrain. This locomotion robustness is puzzling because axon conduction velocity is limited to a few ten meters per second. If reflex loops deliver sensory information with significant delays, one would…
Passive elastic elements can contribute to stability, energetic efficiency, and impact absorption in both biological and robotic systems. They also add dynamical complexity which makes them more challenging to model and control. The impact…
Inspired by spiking neural feedback, we propose a spiking controller for efficient locomotion in a soft robotic crawler. Its bistability, akin to neural fast positive feedback, combined with a sensorimotor slow negative feedback loop,…
Movement in biology is often achieved with distributed control of coupled subcomponents, e.g. muscles and limbs. Coupling could range from weak and local, i.e. decentralized, to strong and global, i.e. centralized. We developed a model-free…
The integration of Supernumerary Limbs (SLs) on humanoid robots poses a significant stability challenge due to the dynamic perturbations they introduce. This thesis addresses this issue by designing a novel hierarchical control architecture…