Related papers: Design and Control of Modular Magnetic Millirobots…
Electromagnetic systems have been used extensively for the control magnetically actuated objects, such as in microrheology and microrobotics research. Therefore, optimizing the design of such systems is highly desired. Some of the features…
While quadruped robots usually have good stability and load capacity, bipedal robots offer a higher level of flexibility / adaptability to different tasks and environments. A multi-modal legged robot can take the best of both worlds. In…
Reconfigurable robots are at the forefront of robotics innovation due to their unmatched versatility and adaptability in addressing various tasks through collaborative operations. This paper explores the design and implementation of a novel…
Small-scale robots hold great potential for targeted cargo delivery in minimally-inv asive medicine. However, current robots often face challenges to locomote efficiently on slip pery biological tissue surfaces, especially when loaded with…
Moving a module in a modular robot is a very complex and error-prone process. Unlike in swarm, in the modular robots we are targeting, the moving module must keep the connection to, at least, one other module. In order to miniaturize each…
This paper introduces a cube-based reconfigurable robot that utilizes an electromagnet-based actuation framework to reconfigure in three dimensions via pivoting. While a variety of actuation mechanisms for self-reconfigurable robots have…
Legged robots have significant potential to operate in highly unstructured environments. The design of locomotion control is, however, still challenging. Currently, controllers must be either manually designed for specific robots and tasks,…
Small-size robots offer access to spaces that are inaccessible to larger ones. This type of access is crucial in applications such as drug delivery, environmental detection, and collection of small samples. However, there are some tasks…
Collective control of mobile microrobotic swarms is indispensable for their potential high-impact applications in targeted drug delivery, medical diagnostics, parallel micromanipulation, and environmental sensing and remediation. Lack of…
We are considering the geometric amoebot model where a set of $n$ amoebots is placed on the triangular grid. An amoebot is able to send information to its neighbors, and to move via expansions and contractions. Since amoebots and…
Serially connected robots are promising candidates for performing tasks in confined spaces such as search-and-rescue in large-scale disasters. Such robots are typically limbless, and we hypothesize that the addition of limbs could improve…
True microrobots, in contrast with externally controlled microparticles, must harvest or carry their own source of energy, as well as their own (preferably programmable) microcontroller of actuators for locomotion, using information…
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…
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…
This paper presents a novel, modular, cable-driven soft robotic arm featuring multi-segment reconfigurability. The proposed architecture enables a stackable system with independent segment control, allowing scalable adaptation to diverse…
Traditional aerial vehicles have limitations in their capabilities due to actuator constraints, such as motor saturation. The hardware components and their arrangement are designed to satisfy specific requirements and are difficult to…
Among small-scale mobile robots, multi-modal locomotion can help compensate for limited actuator capabilities. However, supporting multiple locomotion modes or gaits in small terrestrial robots typically requires complex designs with low…
Wireless millimeter-scale origami robots that can locomote in narrow spaces and morph their shapes have recently been explored with great potential for biomedical applications. Existing millimeter-scale origami devices usually require…
There is a growing need for robots that can change their shape, size and mechanical properties to adapt to evolving tasks and environments. However, current shape-changing systems generally utilize bespoke, system-specific mechanisms that…
An external magnetic field can be used to remotely control small-scaled robots, making them promising candidates for diverse biomedical and engineering applications. We showed that our magnetically actuated millirobot is highly agile and…