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Snap-fits are versatile mechanical designs in industrial products, which enable the repeated assembling and disassembling of two solid parts. This important property is attributed to a fine balance between geometry, friction, and bending…
We introduce a high-throughput platform that enables simultaneous, parallel testing of six bistable beams via programmable motion of a rotating disk. By prescribing harmonic angular dynamics, the platform explores the phase space of angular…
Viscoelasticity governs the locomotion strategies of deformable microorganisms, rendering it a fundamental mechanical property of microbial motility and an integral component in the design of envisioned microbots. Recent studies have shown…
Harnessing the rich nonlinear dynamics of highly-deformable materials has the potential to unlock the next generation of functional smart materials and devices. However, unlocking such potential requires effective strategies to spatially…
Reciprocal movement cannot be used for locomotion at low-Reynolds number in an infinite fluid or near a rigid surface. Here we show that this limitation is relaxed for a body performing reciprocal motions near a deformable interface. Using…
Continuum and soft robots can leverage complex actuator shapes to take on useful shapes while actuating only a few of their many degrees of freedom. Continuum robots that also grow increase the range of potential shapes that can be actuated…
Active processes drive and guide biological dynamics across scales -- from subcellular cytoskeletal remodelling, through tissue development in embryogenesis, to population-level bacterial colonies expansion. In each of these, biological…
Metachronal swimming, the sequential beating of limbs with a small phase lag, is observed in many organisms at various scales, but has been studied mostly in the limits of high or low Reynolds numbers. Motivated by the swimming of brine…
This paper presents the design, modeling, and fabrication of 3D-printed, tendon-actuated continuum robots featuring a flexible, tapered backbone constructed from thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). Our scalable design incorporates an…
Physics governing the locomotion of microorganisms and other microsystems is dominated by viscous damping. An effective swimming strategy involves the non-reciprocal and periodic deformations of the considered body. Here, we show that a…
Despite decades of work in fast reactive planning and control, challenges remain in developing reactive motion policies on non-Euclidean manifolds and enforcing constraints while avoiding undesirable potential function local minima. This…
Nature suggests that exploiting the elasticities and natural dynamics of robotic systems could increase their locomotion efficiency. Prior work on elastic snake robots supports this hypothesis, but has not fully exploited the nonlinear…
In most macro-scale robotics systems , propulsion and controls are enabled through a physical tether or complex on-board electronics and batteries. A tether simplifies the design process but limits the range of motion of the robot, while…
This paper presents a new method for modelling the dynamic behaviour of developable ribbons, two dimensional strips with much smaller width than length. Instead of approximating such surface with a general triangle mesh, we characterize it…
SLOT (Soft Legged Omnidirectional Tetrapod), a tendon-driven soft quadruped robot with 3D-printed TPU legs, is presented to study physics-informed modeling and control of compliant legged locomotion using only four actuators. Each leg is…
Space-time-varying materials pledge to deliver nonreciprocal dispersion in linear systems by inducing an artificial momentum bias. Although such a paradigm eliminates the need for actual motion of the medium, experimental realization of…
The locomotion of flexible membrane-like organisms on top of curved surfaces appears in different contexts and scales. Still, such dynamics have not yet been quantitatively modeled and no realization of such motion in manmade systems has…
Active solids such as cell collectives, colloidal clusters, and active metamaterials exhibit diverse collective phenomena, ranging from rigid body motion to shape-changing mechanisms. The nonlinear dynamics of such active materials remains…
Legged locomotion shows promise for running in complex, unstructured environments. Designing such legged robots requires considering heterogeneous, multi-domain constraints and variables, from mechanical hardware and geometry choices to…
Networks of rigid bars connected by joints, termed linkages, provide a minimal framework to design robotic arms and mechanical metamaterials built out of folding components. Here, we investigate a chain-like linkage that, according to…