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Stable locomotion in precipitous environments is an essential task for quadruped robots, requiring the ability to resist various external disturbances. Recent neural policies enhance robustness against disturbances by learning to resist…

Physical interactive robotics, ranging from wearable devices to collaborative humanoid robots, require close coordination between mechanical design and control. However, evaluating interactive dynamics is challenging due to complex human…

Slow and accurate finger and limb movements are essential to daily activities, but their neural control and governing mechanics are relatively unexplored. We consider neuromechanical systems where slow movements are produced by neural…

Developing a framework for the locomotion of a six-legged robot or a hexapod is a complex task that has extensive hardware and computational requirements. In this paper, we present a bio-inspired framework for the locomotion of a hexapod.…

Human locomotion emerges from high-dimensional neuromuscular control, making predictive musculoskeletal simulation challenging. We present a physiology-informed reinforcement-learning framework that constrains control using muscle…

Most aquatic vertebrates swim by lateral flapping of their bodies and caudal fins. While much effort has been devoted to understanding the flapping kinematics and its influence on the swimming efficiency, little is known about the stability…

We successfully evolved a neural network controller that produces dynamic walking in a simulated bipedal robot with compliant actuators, a difficult control problem. The evolutionary evaluation uses a detailed software simulation of a…

Self-propelling organisms locomote via generation of patterns of self-deformation. Despite the diversity of body plans, internal actuation schemes and environments in limbless vertebrates and invertebrates, such organisms often use similar…

Modeling and control of the human musculoskeletal system is important for understanding human motor functions, developing embodied intelligence, and optimizing human-robot interaction systems. However, current human musculoskeletal models…

Human joint dynamic stiffness plays an important role in the stability of performance augmentation exoskeletons. In this paper, we consider a new frequency domain model of the human joint dynamics which features a complex value stiffness.…

Muscle models and animal observations suggest that physical damping is beneficial for stabilization. Still, only a few implementations of mechanical damping exist in compliant robotic legged locomotion. It remains unclear how physical…

Achieving effective locomotion on diverse terrestrial substrates can require subtle changes of limb kinematics. Biologically inspired legged robots (physical models of organisms) have shown impressive mobility on hard ground but suffer…

Rapid transduction of sensory stimulation to action is essential for an animal to survive. To this end, most animals use the sub-second excitable and multistable dynamics of a neuromuscular system. Here, studying an animal without neurons…

The spine plays a crucial role in the dynamic locomotion of quadrupedal animals, improving the stability, speed, and efficiency of their gait, especially for fast-paced and highly agile movements. Therefore, the spine is also a promising…

Biped robots are inherently unstable because of their complex kinematics as well as dynamics. Despite the many research efforts in developing biped locomotion, the performance of biped locomotion is still far from the expectations. This…

Learning highly dynamic behaviors for robots has been a longstanding challenge. Traditional approaches have demonstrated robust locomotion, but the exhibited behaviors lack diversity and agility. They employ approximate models, which lead…

Passive tumbling uses natural forces like gravity for efficient travel. But without an active means of control, passive tumblers must rely entirely on external forces. Northeastern University's COBRA is a snake robot that can morph into a…

Limbless animals such as snakes, limbless lizards, worms, eels, and lampreys move their slender, long bodies in three dimensions to traverse diverse environments. Accurately quantifying their continuous body's 3-D shape and motion is…

Dynamic walking on bipedal robots has evolved from an idea in science fiction to a practical reality. This is due to continued progress in three key areas: a mathematical understanding of locomotion, the computational ability to encode this…

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…