Related papers: An Open-Source, Reproducible Tensegrity Robot that…
Tensegrity robots, composed of rigid rods and flexible cables, are difficult to accurately model and control given the presence of complex dynamics and high number of DoFs. Differentiable physics engines have been recently proposed as a…
This paper studies the multi-robot reliable navigation problem in uncertain topological networks, which aims at maximizing the robot team's on-time arrival probabilities in the face of road network uncertainties. The uncertainty in these…
It is a challenging task for ground robots to autonomously navigate in harsh environments due to the presence of non-trivial obstacles and uneven terrain. This requires trajectory planning that balances safety and efficiency. The primary…
Limbless terrestrial animals exhibit exceptional locomotor versatility and control, currently unmatched by engineered counterparts. Here, we introduce a computational framework that enables soft synthetic snakes to navigate unstructured,…
Soft-robot designs are manifold, but only a few are publicly available. Often, these are only briefly described in their publications. This complicates reproduction, and hinders the reproducibility and comparability of research results. If…
Inspired by human behavior when traveling over unknown terrain, this study proposes the use of probing strategies and integrates them into a traversability analysis framework to address safe navigation on unknown rough terrain. Our…
This paper presents a new teleoperated spherical tensegrity robot capable of performing locomotion on steep inclined surfaces. With a novel control scheme centered around the simultaneous actuation of multiple cables, the robot demonstrates…
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…
In this paper, we developed a new navigation system, which detects obstacles in a sliding window with an adaptive threshold clustering algorithm, classifies the detected obstacles with a decision tree, heuristically predicts potential…
We present a novel system, AdVENTR for autonomous robot navigation in unstructured outdoor environments that consist of uneven and vegetated terrains. Our approach is general and can enable both wheeled and legged robots to handle outdoor…
Soft robots are notoriously hard to control. This is partly due to the scarcity of models able to capture their complex continuum mechanics, resulting in a lack of control methodologies that take full advantage of body compliance. Currently…
Using dynamic models of tensegrity structures, we derive provable, distributed control laws for stabilizing and changing the shape of a formation of vehicles in the plane. Tensegrity models define the desired, controlled, multi-vehicle…
Navigation and motion control of a robot to a destination are tasks that have historically been performed with the assumption that contact with the environment is harmful. This makes sense for rigid-bodied robots where obstacle collisions…
Autonomous navigation in extreme mountainous terrains poses challenges due to the presence of mobility-stressing elements and undulating surfaces, making it particularly difficult compared to conventional off-road driving scenarios. In such…
Tensegrity robots possess lightweight and resilient structures but present significant challenges for state estimation due to compliant and distributed ground contacts. This paper introduces a symmetry-aware heterogeneous graph neural…
Tendon-driven continuum robots (TDCRs), with their flexible backbones, offer the advantage of being used for navigating complex, cluttered environments. However, to do so, they typically require multiple segments, often leading to complex…
Navigating robots safely and efficiently in crowded and complex environments remains a significant challenge. However, due to the dynamic and intricate nature of these settings, planning efficient and collision-free paths for robots to…
Soft robotics holds tremendous potential for various applications, especially in unstructured environments such as search and rescue operations. However, the lack of autonomy and teleoperability, limited capabilities, absence of gait…
Magnetic navigation systems, including magnetic tracking systems and magnetic actuation systems, have shown great potential for occlusion-free localization and remote control of intracorporeal medical devices and robots in minimally…
This paper introduces a reactive navigation framework for mobile robots in 3-dimensional (3D) space. The proposed approach does not rely on the global map information and achieves fast navigation by employing a tentacle based sampling and…