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Pneumatically operated soft growing robots that extend via tip eversion are well-suited for navigation in confined spaces. Adding the ability to interact with the environment using sensors and tools attached to the robot tip would greatly…
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.…
Robotic Hopping is challenging from the perspective of both modeling the dynamics as well as the mechanical design due to the short period of ground contact in which to actuate on the world. Previous work has demonstrated stable hopping on…
Achieving controlled jumping behaviour for a quadruped robot is a challenging task, especially when introducing passive compliance in mechanical design. This study addresses this challenge via imitation-based deep reinforcement learning…
Tree fruit growers around the world are facing labor shortages for critical operations, including harvest and pruning. There is a great interest in developing robotic solutions for these labor-intensive tasks, but current efforts have been…
Legged robots, particularly quadrupeds, excel at navigating rough terrains, yet their performance under vertical ground perturbations, such as those from oscillating surfaces, remains underexplored. This study introduces a novel approach to…
Everting, soft growing vine robots benefit from reduced friction with their environment, which allows them to navigate challenging terrain. Vine robots can use air pouches attached to their sides for lateral steering. However, when all…
The increasing demand for critical raw materials has revitalized interest in abandoned underground mines, which pose extreme challenges for conventional drilling machinery due to confined, unstructured, and infrastructure-less environments.…
With academic and commercial interest for humanoid robots peaking, multiple platforms are being developed. Through a high level of customization, they showcase impressive performance. Most of these systems remain closed-source or have high…
Electrically-driven soft robots based on piezoelectric actuators may enable compact form factors and maneuverability in complex environments. In most prior work, piezoelectric actuators are used to control a single degree of freedom. In…
Drilling, grinding, and setting anchors on vertical walls are fundamental processes in everyday construction work. Manually doing these works is error-prone, potentially dangerous, and elaborate at height. Today, heavy mobile ground robots…
Orb-weaving spiders detect prey on a web using vibration sensors at leg joints. They often dynamically crouch their legs during prey sensing, likely an active sensing strategy. However, how leg crouching enhances sensing is poorly…
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…
A hover-capable insect-inspired flying robot that can remain long in the air has shown its potential use for both confined indoor and outdoor applications to complete assigned tasks. In this letter, we report improvements in the flight…
Multimodal UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are rarely capable of more than two modalities, i.e., flying and walking or flying and perching. However, being able to fly, perch, and walk could further improve their usefulness by expanding…
This paper discusses the design and implementation of the Modular Pipe Climber inside ASTM D1785 - 15e1 standard pipes [1]. The robot has three tracks which operate independently and are mounted on three modules which are oriented at…
While most micro-robots face difficulty traveling on rugged and uneven terrain, beetles can walk smoothly on the complex substrate without slipping or getting stuck on the surface due to their stiffness-variable tarsi and expandable hooks…
Most legged robots are built with leg structures from serially mounted links and actuators and are controlled through complex controllers and sensor feedback. In comparison, animals developed multi-segment legs, mechanical coupling between…
Quadruped mammals coordinate spinal bending and axial compression to enhance locomotion agility and efficiency. However, existing robotic spines typically lack the active compliance required to support such dynamic behaviours. We present…
In this paper, we present a novel rolling, jumping robot. The robot consists of a driven pendulum mounted to a wheel in a compact, lightweight, 3D printed design. We show that by driving the pendulum to shift the robot's weight…