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Natural selection has tuned many flying and swimming animals across different species to share the same narrow design space for optimal high-efficient and energy-saving locomotion, e.g., their dimensionless Strouhal numbers St that relate…
Mechanical metamaterials with bistable elements can store vast amounts of information, but writing these memories requires impractical local control or lengthy multi-cycle protocols. We overcome this limitation with a dynamic control…
Salps are marine animals consisting of chains of jellyfish-like units. Their efficient underwater locomotion by coordinating multi-jet propulsion has aroused great interest in robotics. This paper presents a geometric mechanics framework…
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…
True microrobots, in contrast with externally controlled microparticles, must harvest or carry their own source of energy, as well as their own (preferably programmable) microcontroller of actuators for locomotion, using information…
Soft robots have drawn great interest due to their ability to take on a rich range of shapes and motions, compared to traditional rigid robots. However, the motions, and underlying statics and dynamics, pose significant challenges to…
In this paper we study the self-propulsion of a dumbbell micro-robot submerged in a viscous fluid. The micro-robot consists of two rigid spherical beads connected by a rod or a spring; the rod's/spring's length is changing periodically. The…
Soft modular robots enable more flexibility and safer interaction with the changing environment than traditional robots. However, it has remained challenging to create deformable connectors that can be integrated into soft machines. In this…
A biomorphic propulsion systemfor underwater robotic fish is presented. The system is based on a combination of an elastic chord with a tail fin fixed on it. The tail fin is connected to servomotor by two symmetric movable thrusts…
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
Flapping-wing robots offer significant versatility; however, achieving efficient multi-modal locomotion remains challenging. This paper presents the design, modeling, and experimentation of a novel tailless flapping-wing robot with three…
This paper presents the design and control of a ballbot drivetrain that aims to achieve high agility, minimal footprint, and high payload capacity while maintaining dynamic stability. Two hardware platforms and analytical models were…
Soft robotic grippers are shown to be high effective for grasping unstructured objects with simple sensing and control strategies. However, they are still limited by their speed, sensing capabilities and actuation mechanism. Hence, their…
Miniature locomotion robots with the ability to navigate confined environments show great promise for a wide range of tasks, including search and rescue operations. Soft miniature locomotion robots, as a burgeoning field, have attracted…
Sinusoidal undulation has long been considered the most successful swimming pattern for fish and bionic aquatic robots [1]. However, a swimming pattern generated by the hair clip mechanism (HCM, part iii, Figure 1A) [2]~[5] may challenge…
Bionic underwater robots have demonstrated their superiority in many applications. Yet, training their intelligence for a variety of tasks that mimic the behavior of underwater creatures poses a number of challenges in practice, mainly due…
It has been a great challenge to develop robots that are able to perform complex movement patterns with high speed and, simultaneously, high accuracy. Copepods are animals found in freshwater and saltwater habitats that can have extremely…
Underwater vehicles have seen significant development over the past seventy years. However, bio-inspired propulsion robots are still in their early stages and require greater interdisciplinary collaboration between biologists and…
This paper describes the control, and evaluation of a new human-scaled biped robot with liquid cooled viscoelastic actuators (VLCA). Based on the lessons learned from previous work from our team on VLCA [1], we present a new system design…
This paper presents aims at mobility improvement of flexible underwater robots. For this purpose, a novel propulsion method using planar structural vibration pattern is proposed, and tested on two kinds of prototypes. The result of…