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Soft robotic snakes (SRSs) have a unique combination of continuous and compliant properties that allow them to imitate the complex movements of biological snakes. Despite the previous attempts to develop SRSs, many have been limited to…
Musculoskeletal robots offer intrinsic compliance and flexibility, providing a promising paradigm for versatile locomotion. However, existing research typically relies on models with fixed muscle physiological parameters. This static…
Nonlinear model predictive locomotion controllers based on the reduced centroidal dynamics are nowadays ubiquitous in legged robots. These schemes, even if they assume an inherent simplification of the robot's dynamics, were shown to endow…
In most macro-scale robotics systems , propulsion and controls are enabled through a physical tether or complex on-board electronics and batteries. A tether simplifies the design process but limits the range of motion of the robot, while…
Elongate limbless robots have the potential to locomote through tightly packed spaces for applications such as search-and-rescue and industrial inspections. The capability to effectively and robustly maneuver elongate limbless robots is…
Miniaturizing legged robot platforms is challenging due to hardware limitations that constrain the number, power density, and precision of actuators at that size. By leveraging design principles of quasi-passive walking robots at any scale,…
Sidewinding, a locomotion strategy characterized by the coordination of lateral and vertical body undulations, is frequently observed in rattlesnakes and has been successfully reconstructed by limbless robotic systems for effective movement…
While quadruped robots usually have good stability and load capacity, bipedal robots offer a higher level of flexibility / adaptability to different tasks and environments. A multi-modal legged robot can take the best of both worlds. In…
Robots need lightweight legs for agile locomotion, and intrinsic series elastic compliance has proven to be a major ingredient for energy-efficient locomotion and robust locomotion control. Animals' anatomy and locomotion capabilities…
Swing arms have an irreplaceable role in promoting highly dynamic locomotion on bipedal robots by a larger angular momentum control space from the viewpoint of biomechanics. Few bipedal robots utilize swing arms and its redundancy…
Under-actuated compliant robotic systems offer a promising approach to mitigating actuation and control challenges by harnessing pre-designed, embodied dynamic behaviors. This paper presents Flix-Walker, a novel, untethered,…
Robotic locomotion is often approached with the goal of maximizing robustness and reactivity by increasing motion control frequency. We challenge this intuitive notion by demonstrating robust and dynamic locomotion with a learned motion…
Optimizing gait stability for legged robots is a difficult problem. Even on level surfaces, effectively traversing across different textures (e.g., carpet) rests on dynamically tuning parameters in multidimensional space. Inspired by…
The automatic design of embodied agents (e.g. robots) has existed for 31 years and is experiencing a renaissance of interest in the literature. To date however, the field has remained narrowly focused on two kinds of anatomically simple…
This paper presents three feedback controllers that achieve an asymptotically stable, periodic, and fast walking gait for a 3D (spatial) bipedal robot consisting of a torso, two legs, and passive (unactuated) point feet. The contact between…
This paper introduces two field transportation robots. Both robots are equipped with transformable wheel-leg modules, which can smoothly switch between operation modes and can work in various challenging terrains. SWhegPro, with six…
Living organisms intertwine soft (e.g., muscle) and hard (e.g., bones) materials, giving them an intrinsic flexibility and resiliency often lacking in conventional rigid robots. The emerging field of soft robotics seeks to harness these…
Modern two and four legged robots exhibit impressive mobility on complex terrain, largely attributed to advancement in learning algorithms. However, these systems often rely on high-bandwidth sensing and onboard computation to…
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…
This study presents a theoretical method for planning and controlling agile bipedal locomotion based on robustly tracking a set of non-periodic keyframe states. Based on centroidal momentum dynamics, we formulate a hybrid phase-space…