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Today, the most widespread, widely applicable technology for gathering data relies on experienced scientists armed with handheld radio telemetry equipment to locate low-power radio transmitters attached to wildlife from the ground. Although…
Autonomous aerial robots provide new possibilities to study the habitats and behaviors of endangered species through the efficient gathering of location information at temporal and spatial granularities not possible with traditional manual…
Long-term wildlife tracking is crucial for biodiversity monitoring, but energy limitations pose challenges, especially for animal tags, where replacing batteries is impractical and stressful for the animal due to the need to locate,…
In order to expand the operational range and payload capacity of robots, wire-driven robots that leverage the external environment have been proposed. It can exert forces and operate in spaces far beyond those dictated by its own structural…
Operating in environments too harsh or inaccessible for humans is one of the critical roles expected of robots. However, such environments often pose risks to electronic components as well. To overcome this, various approaches have been…
This paper presents a soft earthworm robot that is capable of both efficient locomotion and obstacle avoidance. The robot is designed to replicate the unique locomotion mechanisms of earthworms, which enable them to move through narrow and…
Fully autonomous mobile robots have a multitude of potential applications, but guaranteeing robust navigation performance remains an open research problem. For many tasks such as repeated infrastructure inspection, item delivery, or…
Electronic devices are essential for robots but limit their usable environments. To overcome this, methods excluding electronics from the operating environment while retaining advanced electronic control and actuation have been explored.…
This paper focusses on the energy-efficient control of a cable-driven robot for tasks that only require precise positioning at few points in their motion, and where that accuracy can be obtained through contacts. This includes the majority…
We describe a challenging robotics deployment in a complex ecosystem to monitor a rich plant community. The study site is dominated by dynamic grassland vegetation and is thus visually ambiguous and liable to drastic appearance change over…
This paper underscores the importance of environmental monitoring, and specifically of freshwater ecosystems, which play a critical role in sustaining life and global economy. Despite their importance, insufficient data availability…
Robots with the ability to actively acquire power from surroundings will be greatly beneficial for long-term autonomy, and to survive in dynamic, uncertain environments. In this work, a scenario is presented where a robot has limited…
In this paper, we present a full design of a flying robot to investigate the state of power grid components and to perform the appropriate maintenance procedures according to each fail or defect that could be recognized. To realize this…
Wireless energy transfer (WET) is a ground-breaking technology for cutting the last wire between mobile sensors and power grids in smart cities. Yet, WET only offers effective transmission of energy over a short distance. Robotic WET is an…
ReachBot, a proposed robotic platform, employs extendable booms as limbs for mobility in challenging environments, such as martian caves. When attached to the environment, ReachBot acts as a parallel robot, with reconfiguration driven by…
Degraded rangelands undergo continual shifts in the appearance and distribution of plant life. The nature of these changes however is subtle: between seasons seedlings sprout up and some flourish while others perish, meanwhile, over…
Continuous operation of the electrical transmission lines is of great importance for today's electricity-dependent world. It is crucial to detect and diagnose a possible problem on the lines before that occurs. In general, maintenance,…
In many applications, robots are increasingly deployed in unstructured and natural environments where they encounter various types of vegetation. Vegetation presents unique challenges as a traversable obstacle, where the mechanical…
We consider the problem of developing robots that navigate like pedestrians on sidewalks through city centers for performing various tasks including delivery and surveillance. One particular challenge for such robots is crossing streets…
Climate change is one of the defining challenges of the 21st century, and many in the robotics community are looking for ways to contribute. This paper presents a roadmap for climate-relevant robotics research, identifying high-impact…