Related papers: Microscopic Robots That Sense, Think, Act, and Com…
Microscopic analysis of micro particles in situ in diverse water environments is necessary for monitoring water quality and localizing contamination sources. Conventional sensors such as optical microscopes and fluorometers often require…
Recent advances in 3D printing and manufacturing of miniaturized robotic hardware and computing are paving the way to build inexpensive and disposable robots. This will have a large impact on several applications including scientific…
This paper introduces our approach to building a robot with communication capability based on the two key features: stochastic neural dynamics and prediction error minimization (PEM). A preliminary experiment with humanoid robots showed…
Modern sampling-based motion planning algorithms typically take between hundreds of milliseconds to dozens of seconds to find collision-free motions for high degree-of-freedom problems. This paper presents performance improvements of more…
This paper presents the design of a small aerial robot for inhabited microgravity environments, such as orbiting space stations (e.g., ISS). In particular, we target a fleet of robots, called Space CoBots, for collaborative tasks with…
Microstructures, characterized by intricate structures at the microscopic scale, hold the promise of important disruptions in the field of mechanical engineering due to the superior mechanical properties they offer. One fundamental…
Molecular machines may resolve three distinct bottlenecks of scientific advancement. Nanofactories (Phoenix, 2003) composed of MM may produce atomically perfect products spending negligible amount of energy (Hess, 2004) thus alleviating the…
This chapter is about the fundamentals of fabrication, control, and human-robot interaction of a new type of collaborative robotic manipulators, called malleable robots, which are based on adjustable architectures of varying stiffness for…
In this paper we investigate the computational power of a set of mobile robots with limited visibility. At each iteration, a robot takes a snapshot of its surroundings, uses the snapshot to compute a destination point, and it moves toward…
In distributed computing by mobile robots, robots are deployed over a region, continuous or discrete, operating through a sequence of \textit{look-compute-move} cycles. An extensive study has been carried out to understand the computational…
Experiments using large numbers of miniature swarm robots are desirable to teach, study, and test multi-robot and swarm intelligence algorithms and their applications. To realize the full potential of a swarm robot, it should be capable of…
Isoperimetric robots are large scale, untethered inflatable robots that can undergo large shape changes, but have only been demonstrated in one 3D shape -- an octahedron. These robots consist of independent triangles that can change shape…
Autonomous robots are currently one of the most popular Artificial Intelligence problems, having experienced significant advances in the last decade, from Self-driving cars and humanoids to delivery robots and drones. Part of the problem is…
Robotic surgery represents a major breakthrough in medical interventions, which has revolutionized surgical procedures. However, the high cost and limited accessibility of robotic surgery systems pose significant challenges for training…
Microelectronic morphogenesis is the creation and maintenance of complex functional structures by microelectronic information within shape-changing materials. Only recently has in-built information technology begun to be used to reshape…
Biological lifeforms can heal, grow, adapt, and reproduce -- abilities essential for sustained survival and development. In contrast, robots today are primarily monolithic machines with limited ability to self-repair, physically develop, or…
With the fast and unstoppable evolution of robotics and artificial intelligence, effective autonomous navigation in real-world scenarios has become one of the most pressing challenges in the literature. However, demanding requirements, such…
The Michigan Robotics MBot is a low-cost mobile robot platform that has been used to train over 1,400 students in autonomous navigation since 2014 at the University of Michigan and our collaborating colleges. The MBot platform was designed…
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,…
Robotic systems that are intended to augment human capabilities commonly require the use of semi-autonomous control and artificial sensing, while at the same time aiming to empower the user to make decisions and take actions. This work…