Related papers: Comparison between External and Internal Single St…
The complexity of a legged robot's environment or task can inform how specialised its gait must be to ensure success. Evolving specialised robotic gaits demands many evaluations - acceptable for computer simulations, but not for physical…
Robots need lightweight legs for agile locomotion, and intrinsic series elastic compliance has proven to be a major ingredient for energy-efficient locomotion and robust locomotion control. Animals' anatomy and locomotion capabilities…
Soft pneumatic actuators enable safe human-machine interaction with lightweight and powerful applied parts. On the other side, they suffer design limitations as regards complex actuation patterns, including minimum bending radii,…
Legged robots have demonstrated remarkable agility on rigid, stationary ground, but their locomotion reliability remains limited in non-inertial environments, where the supporting ground moves, tilts, or accelerates. Such conditions arise…
With the development of robotics, ground robots are no longer limited to planar motion. Passive height variation due to complex terrain and active height control provided by special structures on robots require a more general navigation…
This paper presents a novel approach through the design and implementation of Cycloidal Quasi-Direct Drive actuators for legged robotics. The cycloidal gear mechanism, with its inherent high torque density and mechanical robustness, offers…
When humans physically interact with robots, we need the robots to be both safe and performant. Series elastic actuators (SEAs) fundamentally advance safety by introducing compliant actuation. On the one hand, adding a spring mitigates the…
Legged locomotion shows promise for running in complex, unstructured environments. Designing such legged robots requires considering heterogeneous, multi-domain constraints and variables, from mechanical hardware and geometry choices to…
This paper presents a 3-DOF hopping robot with a human-like lower-limb joint configuration and a flat foot, capable of performing dynamic and repetitive jumping motions. To achieve both high torque output and a large hollow shaft diameter…
Soft robots have the ability to adapt to their environment, which makes them suitable for use in disaster areas and agricultural fields, where their mobility is constrained by complex terrain. One of the main challenges in developing soft…
Continuum and soft robots can leverage complex actuator shapes to take on useful shapes while actuating only a few of their many degrees of freedom. Continuum robots that also grow increase the range of potential shapes that can be actuated…
Legged-aerial multimodal robots can make the most of both legged and aerial systems. In this paper, we propose a control framework that bypasses heavy onboard computers by using an optimization-free Explicit Reference Governor that…
Legged rovers provide enhanced mobility compared to wheeled platforms, enabling navigation on steep and irregular planetary terrains. However, traditional legged locomotion might be energetically inefficient and potentially dangerous to the…
We present an algorithm to compute planar linkage topology and geometry, given a user-specified end-effector trajectory. Planar linkage structures convert rotational or prismatic motions of a single actuator into an arbitrarily complex…
The design of soft robots is still commonly driven by manual trial-and-error approaches, requiring the manufacturing of multiple physical prototypes, which in the end, is time-consuming and requires significant expertise. To reduce the…
Soft robots are known for their ability to perform tasks with great adaptability, enabled by their distributed, non-uniform stiffness and actuation. Bending is the most fundamental motion for soft robot design, but creating robust, and…
Legged robots are able to navigate complex terrains by continuously interacting with the environment through careful selection of contact sequences and timings. However, the combinatorial nature behind contact planning hinders the…
Single-stage optimization, also known as combined plasma-coil algorithms or direct coil optimization, has recently emerged as a possible method to expedite the design of stellarator devices by including, in a single step, confinement,…
This paper introduces two field transportation robots. Both robots are equipped with transformable wheel-leg modules, which can smoothly switch between operation modes and can work in various challenging terrains. SWhegPro, with six…
We are seeking control design paradigms for legged systems that allow bypassing costly algorithms that depend on heavy on-board computers widely used in these systems and yet being able to match what they can do by using less expensive…