Related papers: Optimal Snake Locomotion on Flat Surfaces: An Anal…
Elongate animals and robots use undulatory body waves to locomote through diverse environments. Geometric mechanics provides a framework to model and optimize such systems in highly damped environments, connecting a prescribed shape change…
We have developed a toy model of flying snake's glide [J.J. Socha, Nature vol. 418 (2002) 603.] by modifying a model for a falling paper. We have found that asymmetric oscillation is a key about why snake can glide. Further investigation…
Robot feet are crucial for maintaining dynamic stability and propelling the body during walking, especially on uneven terrains. Traditionally, robot feet were mostly designed as flat and stiff pieces of metal, which meets its limitations…
The incessant swimming motion of microbes in dense suspensions can give rise to striking collective motions and coherent structures. However, theoretical investigations of these structures typically utilize either computationally demanding…
We studied locomotion of a crawler on a thin Newtonian fluid film whose viscosity varied spatially. We first derived a general locomotion velocity formula with fluid viscosity variations via the lubrication theory. For further analysis, the…
When walking on loose terrains, possibly covered with vegetation, the ground and grass should deform, but the character's gait should also change accordingly. We propose a method for modeling such two-ways interactions in real-time. We…
The two-dimensional motion of an object on a moving rough horizontal plane is investigated. Two cases are studied: the plane having a translational acceleration, and a rotating plane. For the first case, the motions of a point particle and…
We study the parameterized complexity of a variant of the classic video game Snake that models real-world problems of motion planning. Given a snake-like robot with an initial position and a final position in an environment (modeled by a…
We study folding in 16-monomer heteropolymers on the square lattice. For a given sequence, thermodynamic properties and stability of the native state are unique. However, the kinetics of folding depends on the model of dynamics adopted for…
Snake robots offer exceptional mobility across extreme terrain inaccessible to conventional rovers, yet their highly articulated bodies present fundamental challenges for autonomous navigation in environments lacking external tracking…
Soft continuum robots achieve complex deformation through elastic equilibrium, making their reachable motions governed jointly by structural design and actuation-induced mechanics. This work develops a general formulation that integrates…
We document a sequence of bifurcations and elastic patterns in sheared bent sheets of intermediate aspect ratio. The sheets undergo inversion of curvature through the passage of localized features, often in S-shaped pairs. Nested…
We propose a general statistical mechanics framework for the collective motion of animals. The framework considers the principle of maximum entropy, the interaction, boundary, and desire effects, as well as the time-delay effect. These…
This study proposes a novel topology optimization method for unsteady fluid flows induced by actively moving rigid bodies. The key idea of the proposed method is to decouple the design and analysis domains by using separate grids. The…
We study the problem of moving a vertex in an unstructured mesh of triangular, quadrilateral, or tetrahedral elements to optimize the shapes of adjacent elements. We show that many such problems can be solved in linear time using…
This paper represents an adaptive rhythmic control for a snake-like robot with 25 degrees of freedom. The adaptive gait control is implemented in algorithmic way in simulation and on a real robot. We investigated behavioral and energetic…
Snapping mechanisms are investigated for an elastic strip with ends imposed to move and rotate in time. Attacking the problem analytically via Euler's elastica and the second variation of the total potential energy, the number of stable…
Inertia-dominated mechanical systems can achieve net displacement by 1) periodically changing their shape (known as kinematic gait) and 2) adjusting their inertia distribution to utilize the existing nonzero net momentum (known as momentum…
Empirical observations indicate striking similarities among locomotion in terrestrial animals, birds, and fish, but unifying physical grounds are lacking. When applied to efficient locomotion, the analytical mechanics principle of minimum…
Robot navigation within complex environments requires precise state estimation and localization to ensure robust and safe operations. For ambulating mobile robots like robot snakes, traditional methods for sensing require multiple embedded…