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Emergence is a fascinating property of large language models and neural networks more broadly: as models scale and train for longer, they sometimes develop new abilities in sudden ways. Despite initial studies, we still lack a comprehensive…
Human walking efficiency relies on the elastic recoil of the Achilles tendon, facilitated by a "catapult mechanism" that stores energy during stance and releases it during push-off. The catapult release mechanism could include the passive…
Spring-mass models are well established tools for the analysis and control of legged locomotion. Among the alternatives, spring-loaded inverted pendulum (SLIP) model has shown to be a very accurate descriptor of animal locomotion. Despite…
We explore the transport properties of an interacting Fermi gas in a three-dimensional optical lattice. The center of mass dynamics of the atoms after a sudden displacement of the trap minimum is monitored for different interaction…
The wing structure of several insects, including dragonflies, is not smooth, but corrugated; its vertical cross-section consists of a connected series of line segments. Some previous studies have reported that corrugated wings exhibit…
Animals achieve energy-efficient locomotion by their implicit passive dynamics, a marvel that has captivated roboticists for decades.Recently, methods incorporated Adversarial Motion Prior (AMP) and Reinforcement learning (RL) shows…
Characterizing forces on deformable objects intruding into sand and soil requires understanding the solid and fluid-like responses of such substrates and their effect on the state of the object. The most detailed studies of intrusion in dry…
Hopping robots often lose balance on slopes because the tilted ground creates unwanted rotation at landing. This work analyzes that effect using a simple spring mass model and identifies how slope induced impulses destabilize the robot. To…
Handling oversized, variable-shaped, or delicate objects in transportation, grasping tasks is extremely challenging, mainly due to the limitations of the gripper's shape and size. This paper proposes a novel gripper, Lasso Gripper. Inspired…
Aerodynamic ground effect in flapping-wing insect flight is of importance to comparative morphologies and of interest to the micro-air-vehicle (MAV) community. Recent studies, however, show apparently contradictory results of either some…
Active sensing is traditionally defined as the expenditure of energy, typically in the form of movement, for obtaining information. Here, we propose that the combination of reliance on adaptive sensors, the linkage between movement and…
Prefix-based methods have emerged as a promising paradigm for Controllable Text Generation (CTG) due to their parameter efficiency. However, while effective in short sequences, their controllability tends to diminish as the generated…
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated proficiency across various natural language processing (NLP) tasks but often require additional training, such as continual pre-training and supervised fine-tuning. However, the costs…
Collective biological systems display power laws for macroscopic quantities and are fertile probing grounds for statistical physics. Besides power laws, natural insect swarms present strong scale-free correlations, suggesting closeness to…
An asymmetric two-link robot supported atop a flat platform by wheels that roll and pivot freely, but do not slip laterally, will develop forward momentum if the joint between the links is actuated internally. In particular, oscillations in…
We optimize three-dimensional snake kinematics for locomotor efficiency. We assume a general space-curve representation of the snake backbone with small-to-moderate lifting off the ground and negligible body inertia. The cost of locomotion…
Energy absorbing materials, like foams used in protective equipment, are able to undergo large deformations under low stresses, reducing the incoming stress wave below an injury or damage threshold. They are typically effective in absorbing…
Humans and other animals coactivate agonist and antagonist muscles in many motor actions. Increases in muscle coactivation are thought to leverage viscoelastic properties of skeletal muscles to provide resistance against limb motion.…
Training foundation models such as ViTs and LLMs requires tremendous computing cost. Low-rank matrix or tensor factorization offers a parameter-efficient alternative, but often downgrades performance due to the restricted parameter space.…
In this paper, we study a wheeled robot with a prismatic extension joint. This allows the robot to build up momentum to perform jumps over obstacles and to swing up to the upright position after the loss of balance. We propose a template…