Related papers: Realizing Robotic Swimming with Unified Fluid-Robo…
We present a novel framework to explore neural control and design of complex fluidic systems with dynamic solid boundaries. Our system features a fast differentiable Navier-Stokes solver with solid-fluid interface handling, a…
Many different robots have been designed and built to work under water. In many cases, researchers have chosen to use bio-inspired platforms. In most cases, the main goal of the fish inspired robots has been set to autonomously swim and…
The aim of this project is to design, study and build an "eel-like robot" prototype able to swim in three dimensions. The study is based on the analysis of eel swimming and results in the realization of a prototype with 12 vertebrae, a skin…
Deep reinforcement learning has recently been applied to a variety of robotics applications, but learning locomotion for robots with unconventional configurations is still limited. Prior work has shown that, despite the simple modeling of…
Legged robots offer several advantages when navigating unstructured environments, but they often fall short of the efficiency achieved by wheeled robots. One promising strategy to improve their energy economy is to leverage their natural…
Worm-inspired robots provide an effective locomotion strategy for constrained environments by combining cyclic body deformation with alternating anchoring. For compliant robots, however, the interaction between deformable anchoring…
Soft robots achieve functionality through tight coupling among geometry, material composition, and actuation. As a result, effective design optimization requires these three aspects to be considered jointly rather than in isolation. This…
Marine exploration is essential to understanding ocean processes and organisms. While the use of current unmanned underwater vehicles has enabled many discoveries, there are still plenty of limitations toward exploring complex environments.…
The direct-forcing immersed boundary method (DF-IBM) algorithm previously developed by the authors is extended by coupling the Navier-Stokes equations with the Newton-Euler equations for rigid body dynamics within the DF-IBM framework. This…
Over the past few years, robotics simulators have largely improved in efficiency and scalability, enabling them to generate years of simulated data in a few hours. Yet, efficiently and accurately computing the simulation derivatives remains…
The confluence of soft robotics and fluidic logic have sparked innovations in integrated robots with superior flexibility and potential machine intelligence. However, current fluidically driven soft robots suffer from either a large number…
Torque-driven microscale swimming robots, or microrotors, hold significant potential in biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, and micromanipulation. This paper addresses the challenge of…
Coordinating micro-robotic swarms in physiologically realistic, time-dependent fluid environments remains an unsolved challenge for biomedical and environmental applications. We present a hybrid Computational Fluid Dynamics -…
We present a three-dimensional (3D) partitioned aeroelastic formulation for a flexible multibody system interacting with incompressible turbulent fluid flow. While the incompressible Navier-Stokes system is discretized using a stabilized…
We present an optimization-based motion planning algorithm to compute a smooth, collision-free trajectory for a manipulator used to transfer a liquid from a source to a target container. We take into account fluid dynamics constraints as…
The one-to-one mapping of control inputs to actuator outputs results in elaborate routing architectures that limit how complex fluidic soft robot behaviours can currently become. Embodied intelligence can be used as a tool to counteract…
In the last few years, there have been many new developments and significant accomplishments in the research of bionic robot fishes. However, in terms of swimming performance, existing bionic robot fishes lag far behind fish, prompting…
Magnetically actuated fish-like robots offer promising solutions for underwater exploration due to their miniaturization and agility; however, precise control remains a significant challenge because of nonlinear fluid dynamics, flexible fin…
Mimicking the graceful motion of swimming animals remains a core challenge in soft robotics due to the complexity of fluid-structure interaction and the difficulty of controlling soft, biomimetic bodies. Existing modeling approaches are…
Humanoid robots could benefit from using their upper bodies for support contacts, enhancing their workspace, stability, and ability to perform contact-rich and pushing tasks. In this paper, we propose a unified approach that combines an…