Related papers: Modular electronic microrobots with on board senso…
Robots built from soft materials can alter their shape and size in a particular profile. This shape-changing ability could be extremely helpful for rescue robots and those operating in unknown terrains and environments. In changing shape,…
Microorganisms are able to overcome the thermal randomness of their surroundings by harvesting energy to navigate in viscous fluid environments. In a similar manner, synthetic colloidal microswimmers are capable of mimicking complex…
With exquisite precision and reproducibility, cells orchestrate the cooperative action of thousands of nanometer-sized molecular motors to carry out mechanical tasks at much larger length scales, such as cell motility, division and…
Autonomous wheeled-legged robots have the potential to transform logistics systems, improving operational efficiency and adaptability in urban environments. Navigating urban environments, however, poses unique challenges for robots,…
Motile microorganisms, like bacteria and algae, unify abilities like self-propulsion, autonomous navigation, and decision-making on the micron scale. While recent breakthroughs have led to the creation of synthetic microswimmers and…
Limitations in actuation, sensing, and computation have forced small legged robots to rely on carefully tuned, mechanically mediated leg trajectories for effective locomotion. Recent advances in manufacturing, however, have enabled the…
The transport of motile entities across modulated energy landscapes plays an important role in a range of phenomena in biology, colloidal science and solid-state physics. Here, an easily implementable strategy that allows for the collective…
Soft underwater robots typically explore bioinspired designs at the expense of power efficiency when compared to traditional underwater robots, which limits their practical use in real-world applications. We leverage a fluidic closed-loop…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are no good dynamic simulation tools to predict the motion or performance of a microrobot as it moves against a substrate. At…
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
A new type of water droplet transportation on microstructured hydrophobic surface is proposed and investigated experimentally and theoretically - water droplet could be driven by scale effect which is different from the traditional methods.…
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…
Nanostructured dielectric metasurfaces offer unprecedented opportunities to manipulate light by imprinting an arbitrary phase-gradient on an impinging wavefront. This has resulted in the realization of a range of flat analogs to classical…
Fast and programmable transport of liquid droplets on a solid substrate is desirable in microfluidic, thermal, biomedical, and energy devices. Past research has focused on designing substrates with asymmetric structures or gradient…
We introduce and analyze a model for self-reconfigurable robots made up of unit-cube modules. Compared to past models, our model aims to newly capture two important practical aspects of real-world robots. First, modules often do not occupy…
Micro/nanoliter droplet is capable of achieving versatile applications with tiny volume and substantial surface energy, which is a big plus over bulk liquid. Yet, the contradiction of elaborate manipulation and enough power is still a…
The Michigan Robotics MBot is a low-cost mobile robot platform that has been used to train over 1,400 students in autonomous navigation since 2014 at the University of Michigan and our collaborating colleges. The MBot platform was designed…
When swimming at low Reynolds numbers, inertial effects are negligible and reciprocal movements cannot induce net motion. Instead, symmetry breaking is necessary to achieve net propulsion. Directed swimming can be supported by magnetic…
Machines enabled the Industrial Revolution and are central to modern technological progress: A machine's parts transmit forces, motion, and energy to one another in a predetermined manner. Today's engineering frontier, building artificial…
Millirobots are a promising robotic platform for many applications due to their small size and low manufacturing costs. Legged millirobots, in particular, can provide increased mobility in complex environments and improved scaling of…