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Soft pneumatic legged robots show promise in their ability to traverse a range of different types of terrain, including natural unstructured terrain met in applications like precision agriculture. They can adapt their body morphology to the…
We designed and constructed an A-sized base autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), augmented with a stack of modular and extendable hardware and software, including autonomy, navigation, control and high fidelity simulation capabilities…
Traditional rigid underwater vehicles pose risks to delicate marine ecosystems due to high-speed propellers and rigid hulls. This paper presents BactoBot, a low-cost, soft underwater robot designed for safe and gentle marine exploration.…
Magnetic-responsive composites that consist of soft matrix embedded with hard-magnetic particles have recently been demonstrated as robust soft active materials for fast-transforming actuation. However, the deformation of the functional…
Soft Robots distinguish themselves from traditional robots by embracing flexible kinematics. Because of their recent emergence, there exist numerous uncharted territories, including novel actuators, manufacturing processes, and advanced…
This paper presents the MOBIUS platform, a bipedal robot capable of walking, crawling, climbing, and rolling. MOBIUS features four limbs, two 6-DoF arms with two-finger grippers for manipulation and climbing, and two 4-DoF legs for…
Robots still struggle to dynamically traverse complex 3-D terrain with many large obstacles, an ability required for many critical applications. Body-obstacle interaction is often inevitable and induces perturbation and uncertainty in…
Inspired by the snap-through action of a steel hairclip, we propose a design method for in-plane prestressed mechanisms that exhibit biomimetic morphing and high locomotion performance. Compliant bistable flapping mechanisms are fabricated…
Soft robots have drawn great interest due to their ability to take on a rich range of shapes and motions, compared to traditional rigid robots. However, the motions, and underlying statics and dynamics, pose significant challenges to…
Fish have endured millions of years of evolution, and their distinct rigid-flexible body structures offer inspiration for overcoming challenges in underwater robotics, such as limited mobility, high energy consumption, and adaptability.…
Miniature robots provide unprecedented access to confined environments and show promising potential for novel applications such as search-and-rescue and high-value asset inspection. The capability of body deformation further enhances the…
Morphing aerial robots have the potential to transform autonomous flight, enabling navigation through cluttered environments, perching, and seamless transitions between aerial and terrestrial locomotion. Yet mid-flight reconfiguration…
This paper introduces for the first time the design, modelling, and control of a novel morphing multi-rotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that we call the OmniMorph. The morphing ability allows the selection of the configuration that…
For robots to handle the numerous factors that can affect them in the real world, they must adapt to changes and unexpected events. Evolutionary robotics tries to solve some of these issues by automatically optimizing a robot for a specific…
Quadruped robots have the distinct ability to adapt their body and step height to navigate through cluttered environments. Nonetheless, for these robots to utilize their full potential in real-world scenarios, they require awareness of…
A key challenge in robotics is to create efficient methods for grasping objects with diverse shapes, sizes, poses, and properties. Grasping with hand-like end effectors often requires careful selection of hand orientation and finger…
Biological systems, such as the octopus, exhibit masterful cross-scale manipulation by adaptively reconfiguring their entire form, a capability that remains elusive in robotics. Conventional soft grippers, while compliant, are mostly…
Nature has always inspired scientists and engineers to understand the underlying mechanism leading to optimal design in bio-inspired dynamics. This study presents a computational framework for optimizing undulatory swimming profiles using a…
Deep reinforcement learning has emerged as a popular and powerful way to develop locomotion controllers for quadruped robots. Common approaches have largely focused on learning actions directly in joint space, or learning to modify and…
Navigation in turbulent environments is a fundamental challenge for biological and artificial microswimmers. While most existing studies focus on adapting motility or steering, the role of active morphological changes in navigation remains…