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Snakes can move through almost any terrain. Although their locomotion on flat surfaces using planar gaits is inherently stable, when snakes deform their body out of plane to traverse complex terrain, maintaining stability becomes a…
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…
This study proposes a soft robotic device with a slim and flexible body that switches between air blowing and suction with a single airflow control. Suction is achieved by jet flow entraining surrounding air, and blowing is achieved by…
Locomotion by shape changes (spermatozoon swimming, snake slithering, bird flapping) or gas expulsion (rocket firing) is assumed to require environmental interaction, due to conservation of momentum. As first noted in (Wisdom, 2003) and…
Soft everting robots present significant advantages over traditional rigid robots, including enhanced dexterity, improved environmental interaction, and safe navigation in unpredictable environments. While soft everting robots have been…
Snakes can traverse almost all types of environments by bending their elongate bodies in 3-D to interact with the terrain. Similarly, a snake robot is a promising platform to perform critical tasks in various environments. Understanding how…
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…
We propose a novel mechanism that propagates vibration through soft twisted beams, taking advantage of dynamically-coupled anisotropic stiffness to simplify the actuation of walking robots. Using dynamic simulation and experimental…
We propose reaching steps towards the real-time strain control of multiphysics, multiscale continuum soft robots. To study this problem fundamentally, we ground ourselves in a model-based control setting enabled by mathematically precise…
Snapping beams enable rapid geometric transitions through nonlinear instability, offering an efficient means of generating motion in soft robotic systems. In this study, a tendon-driven mechanism consisting of spiral-based metabeams was…
Spring-driven jumping robots use an energised spring for propulsion, while the onboard motor only serves as a spring-charging source. A common mechanism in designing these robots is the rhomboidal linkage, which has been combined with…
Snap-buckling is a rapid shape transition in slender structures, appearing as a fundamental switching mechanism of natural and man-made systems. Boundary conditions of structures are crucial to predict and control their snap-buckling…
Rigid-bodied robots often lack compliance needed to adapt to unstructured environments, while fully soft robots, though highly adaptable, struggle with scalability and load capacity. In nature, musculoskeletal systems balance strength and…
Quadruped robots are becoming increasingly essential for various applications, including industrial inspection and catastrophe search and rescue. These scenarios require robots to possess enhanced agility and obstacle-navigation skills.…
Traversing terrains with sparse footholds like legged animals presents a promising yet challenging task for quadruped robots, as it requires precise environmental perception and agile control to secure safe foot placement while maintaining…
Soft crawling robots exhibit efficient locomotion across various terrains and demonstrate robustness to diverse environmental conditions. Here, we propose a valveless soft-legged robot that integrates a pair of rotary bellows-enclosed soft…
Depending on multiple parameters, soft robots can exhibit different modes of locomotion that are difficult to model numerically. As a result, improving their performance is complex, especially in small-scale systems characterized by low…
Recent progress in legged locomotion has allowed highly dynamic and parkour-like behaviors for robots, similar to their biological counterparts. Yet, these methods mostly rely on egocentric (first-person) perception, limiting their…
The gaits of undulating animals arise from a complex interaction of their central nervous system, muscle, connective tissue, bone, and environment. As a simplifying assumption, many previous studies have often assumed that sufficient…
Almost all robotic systems in use have hard shells, which is limiting in many ways their full potential of physical interaction with humans or their surrounding environment. Robots with soft-shell covers offer an alternative morphology…