Related papers: Optimal Snake Locomotion on Flat Surfaces: An Anal…
Recently, we showed that optimization problems, both in infinite as well as in finite dimensions, for continuous variables and soft excluded volume constraints, can display entire isostatic phases where local minima of the cost function are…
Snake robots composed of alternating single-axis pitch and yaw joints have many internal degrees of freedom, which make them capable of versatile three-dimensional locomotion. In motion planning process, snake robot motions are often…
Flying snakes use a unique method of aerial locomotion: they jump from tree branches, flatten their bodies and undulate through the air to produce a glide. The shape of their body cross-section during the glide plays an important role in…
Biological locomotion in nature is often achieved by the interaction between a flexible body and its surrounding medium. The interaction of a flexible body with granular media is less understood compared with viscous fluids partially due to…
We investigate the morphology and mechanics of a naturally curved elastic arch loaded at its center and frictionally supported at both ends on a flat, rigid substrate. Through systematic numerical simulations, we classify the observed…
In the field of bioimaging, an important part of analyzing the motion of objects is tracking. We propose a method that applies the Sinkhorn distance for solving the optimal transport problem to track objects. The advantage of this method is…
Faced with complex and unstructured construction environments, wheeled and tracked robots exhibit significant limitations in terrain adaptability and flexibility, making it difficult to meet the requirements of autonomous operation.…
Soft machines typically exhibit slow locomotion speed and low manipulation strength because of intrinsic limitations of soft materials. Here, we present a generic design principle that harnesses mechanical instability for a variety of…
We investigate the snaking of localised patterns, seen in numerous physical applications, using a variational approximation. This method naturally introduces the exponentially small terms responsible for the snaking structure, that are not…
Exploring and navigating in extreme environments, such as caves, oceans, and planetary bodies, are often too hazardous for humans, and as such, robots are possible surrogates. These robots are met with significant locomotion challenges that…
Legged rovers provide enhanced mobility compared to wheeled platforms, enabling navigation on steep and irregular planetary terrains. However, traditional legged locomotion might be energetically inefficient and potentially dangerous to the…
Limbless organisms such as snakes can navigate nearly all terrain. In particular, desert-dwelling sidewinder rattlesnakes (Crotalus cerastes) operate effectively on inclined granular media (such as sand dunes) that induce failure in…
A novel approach is presented for computing flexible body dynamics based on conventional structural dynamics models. This approach innovatively captures the rigid body motion component embedded within a flexible body's movement, generates…
The elastohydrodynamics of slender bodies in a viscous fluid have long been the source of theoretical investigation, being pertinent to the microscale world of ciliates and flagellates as well as to biological and engineered active matter…
Untethered soft robots are essential for advancing the real-world deployment of soft robotic systems in diverse and multitasking environments. Inspired by soft-bodied inchworm, we present a fully untethered soft robot with a curved,…
We provide exact solutions of the Stokes equations for a squirming sphere close to a no-slip surface, both planar and spherical, and for the interactions between two squirmers, in three dimensions. These allow the hydrodynamic interactions…
Although recent years have seen significant progress of humanoid robots in walking and running, the frequent foot strikes with ground during these locomotion gaits inevitably generate high instantaneous impact forces, which leads to…
This paper presents an optimization-based motion planning methodology for snake robots operating in constrained environments. By using a reduced-order model, the proposed approach simplifies the planning process, enabling the optimizer to…
This paper investigates the flow of a solidifying liquid film on a solid surface subject to a complex kinematics, a process relevant to pancake making and surface coating. The flow is modeled using the lubrication approximation, with a…
A pure snake configuration is a bijection $\sigma:\mathbb{Z}^2 \to \mathbb{Z}^2$ containing no two-cycles and such that for each $x \in \mathbb{Z}^2$ we have $\sigma(x) \in \{ x , x+ \mathbf{e}^1, x+\mathbf{e}^2 , x- \mathbf{e}^2 \}.$ The…