Related papers: Creating a biologically more accurate spider robot…
Orb-weaving spiders primarily sense leg vibrations to detect and locate prey caught on their wheel-shaped webs. Biological experiments and computational modeling elucidated the physics of how these spiders use long-timescale web-building…
Spiders use their webs as multifunctional tools that enable capturing and localizing prey and more general environmental sensing through vibrations. Inspired by their biological function, we present a spider web-inspired optical waveguide…
Crawling is a common locomotion mechanism in soft robots and nonskeletal animals. In this work we propose modeling soft-robotic legged locomotion by approximating it with an equivalent articulated robot with elastic joints. For concreteness…
Despite advances in a diversity of environments, snake robots are still far behind snakes in traversing complex 3-D terrain with large obstacles. This is due to a lack of understanding of how to control 3-D body bending to push against…
Inchworm crawling allows for both quasistatic and dynamic gaits at a wide range of actuation frequencies. This locomotion mechanism is common in nonskeletal animals and exploited extensively in the bio-inspired field of soft robotics. In…
Snakes are a remarkable evolutionary success story. Many snake-inspired robots have been proposed over the years. Soft robotic snakes (SRS) with their continuous and smooth bending capability better mimic their biological counterparts'…
Insects have tiny brains but complicated visual systems for motion perception. A handful of insect visual neurons have been computationally modeled and successfully applied for robotics. How different neurons collaborate on motion…
Bioinspired snake robotics has been a highly active area of research over the years and resulted in many prototypes. Much of these prototypes takes the form of serially jointed-rigid bodies. The emergence of soft robotics contributed to a…
Limitations in actuation, sensing, and computation have forced small legged robots to rely on carefully tuned, mechanically mediated leg trajectories for effective locomotion. Recent advances in manufacturing, however, have enabled the…
Tactile sensing on human feet is crucial for motion control, however, has not been explored in robotic counterparts. This work is dedicated to endowing tactile sensing to legged robot's feet and showing that a single-legged robot can be…
Many organisms, including various species of spiders and caterpillars, change their shape to switch gaits and adapt to different environments. Recent technological advances, ranging from stretchable circuits to highly deformable soft…
The heavy-load legged robot has strong load carrying capacity and can adapt to various unstructured terrains. But the large weight results in higher requirements for motion stability and environmental perception ability. In order to utilize…
The growing complexity of real-world problems has motivated computer scientists to search for efficient problem-solving methods. Metaheuristics based on evolutionary computation and swarm intelligence are outstanding examples of…
Multi-legged robots with six or more legs are not in common use, despite designs with superior stability, maneuverability, and a low number of actuators being available for over 20 years. This may be in part due to the difficulty in…
This research considers the task of evolving the physical structure of a robot to enhance its performance in various environments, which is a significant problem in the field of Evolutionary Robotics. Inspired by the fields of evolutionary…
Robotic-assisted orthopaedic surgeries demand accurate, automated leg manipulation for improved spatial accuracy to reduce iatrogenic damage. In this study, we propose novel rigid body designs and an optical tracking volume setup for…
Snake robots have been studied for decades with the aim of achieving biological snakes' fluent locomotion. Yet, as of today, their locomotion remains far from that of the biological snakes. Our recent study suggested that snake locomotion…
High resolution tactile sensing has great potential in autonomous mobile robotics, particularly for legged robots. One particular area where it has significant promise is the traversal of challenging, varied terrain. Depending on whether an…
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…
This paper presents the development of an adaptive intelligent spider robot. With the incorporation of sensors, the four-legged spider robot is able to monitor the environment wirelessly. A new auto-station adaptation National Instrument…