Related papers: RhoMorph: Rhombus-shaped Deformable Modular Robots…
Robotic systems operating in unstructured environments require the ability to switch between compliant and rigid states to perform diverse tasks such as adaptive grasping, high-force manipulation, shape holding, and navigation in…
Robot simulators are indispensable tools across many fields, and recent research has significantly improved their functionality by incorporating additional gradient information. However, existing differentiable robot simulators suffer from…
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…
Robotic Manipulation Surfaces (RMS) manipulate objects by deforming the surface on which they rest, offering safe, parallel handling of diverse and fragile items. However, existing designs face a fundamental tradeoff: achieving fine control…
This paper presents an open-source, lightweight, yet comprehensive software framework, named RPC, which integrates physics-based simulators, planning and control libraries, debugging tools, and a user-friendly operator interface. RPC…
The paper presents a new formal way of modeling and designing reconfigurable robots, in which case the robots are allowed to reconfigure not only structurally but also functionally. We call such kind of robots "self-evolvable", which have…
Morphing quadrotors with four external actuators can adapt to different restricted scenarios by changing their geometric structure. However, previous works mainly focus on the improvements in structures and controllers, and existing…
Modular robots can be rearranged into a new design, perhaps each day, to handle a wide variety of tasks by forming a customized robot for each new task. However, reconfiguring just the mechanism is not sufficient: each design also requires…
This letter presents a novel and retractable ring-shaped quadrotor called Ring-Rotor that can adjust the vehicle's length and width simultaneously. Unlike other morphing quadrotors with high platform complexity and poor controllability,…
Natural organisms utilize distributed actuation through their musculoskeletal systems to adapt their gait for traversing diverse terrains or to morph their bodies for varied tasks. A longstanding challenge in robotics is to emulate this…
Limbless organisms of all sizes use undulating patterns of self-deformation to locomote. Geometric mechanics, which maps deformations to motions, provides a powerful framework to formalize and investigate the theoretical properties and…
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…
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…
The development of versatile robots capable of traversing challenging and irregular environments is of increasing interest in the field of robotics, and metameric robots have been identified as a promising solution due to their slender,…
This paper presents a low-cost, centralized modular underwater robot platform, ModCube, which can be used to study swarm coordination for a wide range of tasks in underwater environments. A ModCube structure consists of multiple ModCube…
Soft robotics focuses on designing robots with highly deformable materials, allowing them to adapt and operate safely and reliably in unstructured and variable environments. While soft robots offer increased compliance over rigid body…
We describe a docking mechanism and strategy to allow modular self-assembly for the Modboat: an inexpensive underactuated oscillating swimming robot powered by a single motor. Because propulsion is achieved through oscillation, orientation…
Reconfigurable robots refer to a category of robots that their components (individual joints and links) can be assembled in multiple configurations and geometries. Most of existing latching mechanisms are based on physical tools such as…
Modular robots can be reconfigured to create a variety of designs from a small set of components. But constructing a robot's hardware on its own is not enough -- each robot needs a controller. One could create controllers for some designs…
Robots are often built from standardized assemblies, (e.g. arms, legs, or fingers), but each robot must be trained from scratch to control all the actuators of all the parts together. In this paper we demonstrate a new approach that takes a…