Related papers: Emergent functional dynamics of link-bots
The field of synthetic active matter has, thus far, been led by efforts to create point-like, isolated (yet interacting) self-propelled objects (\emph{e.g.} colloids, droplets, microrobots) and understanding their collective dynamics. The…
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…
Technical advances in collaborative robots (cobots) are making them increasingly attractive to companies. However, many human operators are not trained to program complex machines. Instead, humans are used to communicating with each other…
Legged robots can have a unique role in manipulating objects in dynamic, human-centric, or otherwise inaccessible environments. Although most legged robotics research to date typically focuses on traversing these challenging environments,…
Legged robots have achieved impressive feats in dynamic locomotion in challenging unstructured terrain. However, in entertainment applications, the design and control of these robots face additional challenges in appealing to human…
Bioinspired snake robotics has been a highly active area of research over the years and resulted in many prototypes. Much of these prototypes takes the form of serially jointed-rigid bodies. The emergence of soft robotics contributed to a…
Biological swarms, such as ant colonies, achieve collective goals through decentralized and stochastic individual behaviors. Similarly, physical systems composed of gases, liquids, and solids exhibit random particle motion governed by…
Every robot built to date was predesigned by an external process, prior to deployment. Here we show a robot that actively participates in its own design during its lifetime. Starting from a randomly assembled body, and using only…
Legged robots have demonstrated remarkable agility on rigid, stationary ground, but their locomotion reliability remains limited in non-inertial environments, where the supporting ground moves, tilts, or accelerates. Such conditions arise…
Active matter systems characterized by the interplay of chirality and self-alignment offer a rich landscape for the emergence of non-equilibrium collective behaviors and the development of autonomous materials. We present a versatile…
We introduce a simple model of self-propelled agents connected by linear springs, with no explicit alignment rules. Below a critical noise level, the agents self-organize into a collectively translating or rotating group. We derive…
The coordination of robot swarms - large decentralized teams of robots - generally relies on robust and efficient inter-robot communication. Maintaining communication between robots is particularly challenging in field deployments.…
Torque control algorithms which consider robot dynamics and contact constraints are important for creating dynamic behaviors for humanoids. As computational power increases, algorithms tend to also increase in complexity. However, it is not…
The recent finding of collective actuation in active solids, namely solids embedded with active units, opens the path towards multifunctional materials with genuine autonomy. In such systems, collective dynamics emerge spontaneously and…
Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…
Locomotion gaits are fundamental for control of soft terrestrial robots. However, synthesis of these gaits is challenging due to modeling of robot-environment interaction and lack of a mathematical framework. This work presents an…
Closed kinematic chains are created whenever multiple robot arms concurrently manipulate a single object. The closed-chain constraint, when coupled with robot joint limits, dramatically changes the connectivity of the configuration space.…
Soft materials have many important roles in animal locomotion and object manipulation. In robotic applications soft materials can store and release energy, absorb impacts, increase compliance and increase the range of possible shape…
We investigate the sensorimotor loop of simple robots simulated within the LPZRobots environment from the point of view of dynamical systems theory. For a robot with a cylindrical shaped body and an actuator controlled by a single…
Soft robotic snakes made of compliant materials can continuously deform their bodies and, therefore, mimic the biological snakes' flexible and agile locomotion gaits better than their rigid-bodied counterparts. Without wheel support, to…