Related papers: Optimal gait design for nonlinear soft robotic cra…

Locomotion on dynamic rigid surface (i.e., rigid surface accelerating in an inertial frame) presents complex challenges for controller design, which are essential for deploying humanoid robots in dynamic real-world environments such as…

Thanks to recent advancements in accelerating non-linear model predictive control (NMPC), it is now feasible to deploy whole-body NMPC at real-time rates for humanoid robots. However, enforcing inequality constraints in real time for such…

Multi-legged mobile robots possess high mobility performance in rough terrain environments, stemming from their high postural stability, joint flexibility, and the redundancy provided by multiple legs. In prior research on navigating…

Collision-free planning is essential for bipedal robots operating within unstructured environments. This paper presents a real-time Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework that addresses both body and foot avoidance for dynamic bipedal…

Soft robotic crawlers are mobile robots that utilize soft body deformability and compliance to achieve locomotion through surface contact. Designing control strategies for such systems is challenging due to model inaccuracies, sensor noise,…

The complexity of a legged robot's environment or task can inform how specialised its gait must be to ensure success. Evolving specialised robotic gaits demands many evaluations - acceptable for computer simulations, but not for physical…

We present a computational design system that assists users to model, optimize, and fabricate quad-robots with soft skins.Our system addresses the challenging task of predicting their physical behavior by fully integrating the multibody…

Legged locomotion is a highly promising but under-researched subfield within the field of soft robotics. The compliant limbs of soft-limbed robots offer numerous benefits, including the ability to regulate impacts, tolerate falls, and…

SLOT (Soft Legged Omnidirectional Tetrapod), a tendon-driven soft quadruped robot with 3D-printed TPU legs, is presented to study physics-informed modeling and control of compliant legged locomotion using only four actuators. Each leg is…

Soft robots are robotic systems made of deformable materials and exhibit unique flexibility that can be exploited for complex environments and tasks. However, their control problem has been considered a challenging subject because they are…

The properties and applications of auxetics have been widely explored in the past years. Through proper utilization of auxetic structures, designs with unprecedented mechanical and structural behaviors can be produced. Taking advantage of…

This paper presents SCALER, a versatile free-climbing multi-limbed robot that is designed to achieve tightly coupled simultaneous locomotion and dexterous grasping. While existing quadrupedal-limbed robots have demonstrated impressive…

In this paper, we speculate on a possible application of Liquid Crystal Elastomers to the field of soft robotics. In particular, we study a concept for limbless locomotion that is amenable to miniaturisation. For this purpose, we formulate…

Many robotic systems locomote using gaits - periodic changes of internal shape, whose mechanical interaction with the robot's environment generate characteristic net displacements. Prominent examples with two shape variables are the low…

Bipedal walking is one of the most important hallmarks of human that robots have been trying to mimic for many decades. Although previous control methodologies have achieved robot walking on some terrains, there is a need for a framework…

Being able to fall safely is a necessary motor skill for humanoids performing highly dynamic tasks, such as running and jumping. We propose a new method to learn a policy that minimizes the maximal impulse during the fall. The optimization…

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…

Soft grippers are receiving growing attention due to their compliance-based interactive safety and dexterity. Hybrid gripper (soft actuators enhanced by rigid constraints) is a new trend in soft gripper design. With right structural…

In this paper we study crawling locomotion based on directional frictional interactions, namely, frictional forces that are sensitive to the sign of the sliding velocity. Surface interactions of this type are common in biology, where they…

Motion planning trajectories for a multi-limbed robot to climb up walls requires a unique combination of constraints on torque, contact force, and posture. This paper focuses on motion planning for one particular setup wherein a six-legged…