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While bio-inspired and biomimetic systems draw inspiration from living materials, biohybrid systems incorporate them with synthetic devices, allowing the exploitation of both organic and artificial advantages inside a single entity. In the…
Tactile sensing in biological organisms is deeply intertwined with morphological form, such as human fingers, cat paws, and elephant trunks, which enables rich and adaptive interactions through a variety of geometrically complex structures.…
Multi-legged elongate robots hold promise for maneuvering through complex environments. Prior work has demonstrated that reliable locomotion can be achieved using open-loop body undulation and foot placement on rugose terrain. However,…
In the human hand, high-density contact information provided by afferent neurons is essential for many human grasping and manipulation capabilities. In contrast, robotic tactile sensors, including the state-of-the-art SynTouch BioTac, are…
Tactile perception is essential for human interaction with the environment and is becoming increasingly crucial in robotics. Tactile sensors like the BioTac mimic human fingertips and provide detailed interaction data. Despite its utility…
Humans display the remarkable ability to sense the world through tools and other held objects. For example, we are able to pinpoint impact locations on a held rod and tell apart different textures using a rigid probe. In this work, we…
This paper presents the design, development and testing of GiAnt, an affordable hexapod which is inspired by the efficient motions of ants. The decision to model GiAnt after ants rather than other insects is rooted in ants' natural…
Tiny flying robots hold great potential for search-and-rescue, safety inspections, and environmental monitoring, but their small size limits conventional sensing-especially with poor-lighting, smoke, dust or reflective obstacles. Inspired…
While most insect-inspired robots come with a simple tarsus such as a hemispherical foot tip, insect legs have complex tarsal structures and claws, which enable them to walk on complex terrain. Their sharp claws can smoothly attach and…
Robots are expected to grasp a wide range of objects varying in shape, weight or material type. Providing robots with tactile capabilities similar to humans is thus essential for applications involving human-to-robot or robot-to-robot…
High-density afferents in the human hand have long been regarded as essential for human grasping and manipulation abilities. In contrast, robotic tactile sensors are typically used to provide low-density contact data, such as…
Fully autonomous mobile robots have a multitude of potential applications, but guaranteeing robust navigation performance remains an open research problem. For many tasks such as repeated infrastructure inspection, item delivery, or…
Underwater robotics has advanced significantly over recent decades. however, the development of miniaturized underwater robots remains limited by low energy densities of traditional power sources. Nature offers compelling…
The flight of biological butterflies represents a unique aerodynamic regime where high-amplitude, low-frequency wingstrokes induce significant body undulations and inertial fluctuations. While existing tailless flapping-wing micro air…
Low cost robots, such as vacuum cleaners or lawn mowers, employ simplistic and often random navigation policies. Although a large number of sophisticated localization and planning approaches exist, they require additional sensors like LIDAR…
The centimeter-scale cyborg insects have a potential advantage for application in narrow environments where humans cannot operate. To realize such tasks, researchers have developed a small printed-circuit-board (PCB) which an insect can…
Robots require full-body, high-resolution tactile sensing to operate safely in unstructured environments, enabling reflexive responses and closed-loop control. However, the pixel counts needed for dense, large-area coverage limit readout…
Suckers are significant for robots in picking, transferring, manipulation and locomotion on diverse surfaces. However, most of the existing suckers lack high-fidelity perceptual and tactile sensing, which impedes them from resolving the…
Quadrupedal robots have demonstrated remarkable agility and robustness in traversing complex terrains. However, they struggle with dynamic object interactions, where contact must be precisely sensed and controlled. To bridge this gap, we…
The perception and recognition of the surroundings is one of the essential tasks for a robot. With preliminary knowledge about a target object, it can perform various manipulation tasks such as rolling motion, palpation, and force control.…