Related papers: Autonomous life-like behavior emerging in active a…
Biological systems exhibit large-scale self-organized dynamics and structures which enable organisms to perform the functions of life. The field of active matter strives to develop and understand microscopically-driven nonequilibrium…
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…
Humanoid robots, as general-purpose physical agents, must integrate both intelligent control and adaptive morphology to operate effectively in diverse real-world environments. While recent research has focused primarily on optimizing…
Robots often interact with the world via attached parts such as wheels, joints, or appendages. In many systems, these interactions, and the manner in which they lead to locomotion, can be understood using the machinery of geometric…
A robotic platform for mobile manipulation needs to satisfy two contradicting requirements for many real-world applications: A compact base is required to navigate through cluttered indoor environments, while the support needs to be large…
In this paper, we present an underactuated biomimetic underwater robot that is suitable for ecosystem monitoring in both marine and freshwater environments. We present an updated mechanical design for a fish-like robot and propose minimal…
Living systems are made of active materials with microscopic components that work together to perform macroscopic biological tasks. The breakdown of these collective functionalities leads to diseases, which, conversely, could be treated by…
The advantage of modular self-reconfigurable robot systems is their flexibility, but this advantage can only be realized if appropriate configurations (shapes) and behaviors (controlling programs) can be selected for a given task. In this…
The development of intelligent robots seeks to seamlessly integrate them into the human world, providing assistance and companionship in daily life and work, with the ultimate goal of achieving human-robot symbiosis. This requires robots…
Allosteric interactions occur when binding at one part of a complex affects the interactions at another part. Allostery offers a high degree of control in multi-species processes, and these interactions play a crucial role in many…
Robotic materials are multi-robot systems formulated to leverage the low-order computation and actuation of the constituents to manipulate the high-order behavior of the entire material. We study the behaviors of ensembles composed of smart…
The ocean vast unexplored regions and diverse soft-bodied marine organisms have spurred interest in bio-inspired underwater soft robotics. Recent advances have enabled new capabilities in underwater movement, sensing, and interaction.…
Building intelligent autonomous systems at any scale is challenging. The sensing and computation constraints of a microrobot platform make the problems harder. We present improvements to learning-based methods for on-board learning of…
Micron-size self-propelling particles are often proposed as synthetic models for biological microswimmers, yet they lack internally regulated adaptation, which is central to the autonomy of their biological counterparts. Conversely,…
Neuromorphic engineering is a rapidly developing field that aims to take inspiration from the biological organization of neural systems to develop novel technology for computing, sensing, and actuating. The unique properties of such systems…
Every robot built to date was predesigned by an external process, prior to deployment. Here we show a robot that actively participates in its own design during its lifetime. Starting from a randomly assembled body, and using only…
Purpose of Review: This review provides an overview of the state of the art in bioinspired soft robotics with by examining advancements in actuation, functionality, modeling, and control. Recent Findings: Recent research into actuation…
Geometric mechanics provides valuable insights into how biological and robotic systems use changes in shape to move by mechanically interacting with their environment. In high-friction environments it provides that the entire interaction is…
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…
Multi-step pathways, constituted of a sequence of reconfigurations, are central to a wide variety of natural and man-made systems. Such pathways autonomously execute in self-guided processes such as protein folding and self-assembly, but…