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Living organisms intertwine soft (e.g., muscle) and hard (e.g., bones) materials, giving them an intrinsic flexibility and resiliency often lacking in conventional rigid robots. The emerging field of soft robotics seeks to harness these…
Electro-thermally actuated origami provides a novel method for creating 3-D systems with advanced morphing and functional capabilities. However, it is currently difficult to simulate the multi-physical behavior of such systems because the…
Kirigami involves cutting a flat, thin sheet that allows it to morph from a closed, compact configuration into an open deployed structure via coordinated rotations of the internal tiles. By recognizing and generalizing the geometric…
An orthotropic metamaterial is composed of elements arrayed periodically in space. The element includes two cuboid structures. The first structure is the basic structure of the element, and the second structure is the transformation of the…
For distributed applications to take full advantage of cloud computing systems, we need middleware systems that allow developers to build elasticity management components right into the applications. This paper describes the design and…
Recent advances in multistable metamaterials reveal a link between structural configuration transition and Boolean logic, heralding a new generation of computationally capable intelligent materials. To enable higher-level computation,…
Animals can finely modulate their leg stiffness to interact with complex terrains and absorb sudden shocks. In feats like leaping and sprinting, animals demonstrate a sophisticated interplay of opposing muscle pairs that actively modulate…
Soft robots are compliant but often cannot support loads or hold their shape, while rigid robots provide structural strength but are less adaptable. Existing variable-stiffness systems usually operate at the scale of whole segments or…
The ability to modify morphology in response to environmental changes represents a highly advantageous feature in biological organisms, facilitating their adaptation to diverse environmental conditions. While some robots have the capability…
Origami metamaterials made of repeating unit cells of parallelogram panels joined at folds dramatically change their shape through a collective motion of their cells. Here we develop an effective elastic model and numerical method to study…
Origami offers a promising alternative for designing innovative soft robotic actuators. While features of origami, such as bi-directional motion and structural anisotropy, haven't been extensively explored in the past, this letter presents…
Traditional origami starts from flat surfaces, leading to crease patterns consisting of Euclidean vertices. However, Euclidean vertices are limited in their folding motions, are degenerate, and suffer from misfolding. Here we show how…
Origami-inspired robots are of particular interest given their potential for rapid and accessible design and fabrication of elegant designs and complex functionalities through cutting and folding of flexible 2D sheets or even strings,…
Modular Self-Reconfigurable Robot (MSRR) systems are a class of robots capable of forming higher-level robotic systems by altering the topological relationships between modules, offering enhanced adaptability and robustness in various…
Limbless creatures can crawl on flat surfaces by deforming their bodies and interacting with asperities on the ground, offering a biological blueprint for designing efficient limbless robots. Inspired by this natural locomotion, we present…
Following on Part I of this work series on local kirigami mechanics, we present a study of a discretely creased mechanism as a model to investigate the mechanics of the basic geometric building block of kirigami--the e-cone. We consider an…
This study proposes and examines a novel approach to generate peristaltic-like locomotion in a segmented origami robot. Specifically, we demonstrate the use of multi-stability embedded in origami skeleton to eliminate the need for multiple…
Robot co-design, where the morphology of a robot is optimized jointly with a learned policy to solve a specific task, is an emerging area of research. It holds particular promise for soft robots, which are amenable to novel manufacturing…
In this paper, we propose a novel design of a hybrid mobile robot with controllable stiffness and deformable shape. Compared to conventional mobile agents, our system can switch between rigid and compliant phases by solidifying or melting…
Kirigami metamaterials dramatically change their shape through a coordinated motion of nearly rigid panels and flexible slits. Here, we study a model system for mechanism-based planar kirigami featuring periodic patterns of quadrilateral…