Related papers: Multimodal Limbless Crawling Soft Robot with a Kir…
Legged robots constructed from soft materials are commonly claimed to demonstrate safer, more robust environmental interactions than their rigid counterparts. However, this motivating feature of soft robots requires more rigorous…
Manipulation of thin sheets by folding and cutting offers opportunity to engineer structures with novel mechanical properties, and to prescribe complex force-displacement relationships via material elasticity in combination with the…
Wheeled-legged robots combine the efficiency of wheeled robots when driving on suitably flat surfaces and versatility of legged robots when stepping over or around obstacles. This paper introduces a planning and control framework to realise…
Spider monkeys (genus Ateles) have a prehensile tail that functions as a flexible, multipurpose fifth limb, enabling them to navigate complex terrains, grasp objects of various sizes, and swing between supports. Inspired by the spider…
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…
Some animals exhibit multi-modal locomotion capability to traverse a wide range of terrains and environments, such as amphibians that can swim and walk or birds that can fly and walk. This capability is extremely beneficial for expanding…
The development of versatile robots capable of traversing challenging and irregular environments is of increasing interest in the field of robotics, and metameric robots have been identified as a promising solution due to their slender,…
Origami-inspired robots with multiple advantages, such as being lightweight, requiring less assembly, and exhibiting exceptional deformability, have received substantial and sustained attention. However, the existing origami-inspired robots…
Amphibious legged robots inspired by salamanders are promising in applications in complex amphibious environments. However, despite the significant success of training controllers that achieve diverse locomotion behaviors in conventional…
Mechanical waves that travel without inertia are often encountered in nature -- e.g. motion of plants -- yet such waves remain rare in synthetic materials. Here, we discover the emergence of slow kinks in overdamped metamaterials and we…
Soft robotics holds tremendous potential for various applications, especially in unstructured environments such as search and rescue operations. However, the lack of autonomy and teleoperability, limited capabilities, absence of gait…
We present an approach to overcoming challenges in dynamical dexterity for robots through tunable origami structures. Our work leverages a one-parameter family of flat sheet crease patterns that folds into origami bellows, whose axial…
Rectilinear crawling locomotion is a primitive and common mode of locomotion in slender, soft-bodied animals. It requires coordinated contractions that propagate along a body that interacts frictionally with its environment. We propose a…
Robust and energy-efficient bipedal locomotion in robotics is still a challenging topic. In order to address issues in this field, we can take inspiration from nature, by studying human locomotion. The Spring-Loaded Inverted Pendulum (SLIP)…
A wide range of microorganisms, e.g. bacteria, propel themselves by rotation of soft helical tails, also known as flagella. Due to the small size of these organisms, viscous forces overwhelm inertial effects and the flow is at low Reynolds…
This study proposes and examines a novel approach to generate peristaltic-like locomotion in a segmented origami robot. Specifically, we demonstrate the use of multi-stability embedded in origami skeleton to eliminate the need for multiple…
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…
The functional demands of robotic systems often require completing various tasks or behaviors under the effect of disturbances or uncertain environments. Of increasing interest is the autonomy for dynamic robots, such as multirotors, motor…
Magnetic-responsive composites that consist of soft matrix embedded with hard-magnetic particles have recently been demonstrated as robust soft active materials for fast-transforming actuation. However, the deformation of the functional…
The collective motion of arrays of cilia - tiny, hairlike protrusions - drives the locomotion of numerous microorganisms, enabling multimodal motion and autonomous switching between gaits to navigate complex environments. To endow…