Related papers: TerraSkipper: A Centimeter-Scale Robot for Multi-T…
Undesired lateral and longitudinal wheel slippage can disrupt a mobile robot's heading angle, traction, and, eventually, desired motion. This issue makes the robotization and accurate modeling of heavy-duty machinery very challenging…
For nearly a century, researchers have tried to understand the swimming of aquatic animals in terms of a balance between the forward thrust from swimming movements and drag on the body. Prior approaches have failed to provide a separation…
We present OpenFish: an open source soft robotic fish which is optimized for speed and efficiency. The soft robotic fish uses a combination of an active and passive tail segment to accurately mimic the thunniform swimming mode. Through the…
Soft robots have drawn great interest due to their ability to take on a rich range of shapes and motions, compared to traditional rigid robots. However, the motions, and underlying statics and dynamics, pose significant challenges to…
Collapsing terrains, often present in search and rescue missions or planetary exploration, pose significant challenges for quadruped robots. This paper introduces a robust locomotion framework for safe navigation over unstable surfaces by…
Bio-inspired vehicles are currently leading the way in the quest to produce a vehicle capable of flight and underwater navigation. However, a fully functional vehicle has not yet been realized. We present the first fully functional vehicle…
Robotic grasping and manipulation in underwater environments present unique challenges for robotic hands traditionally used on land. These challenges stem from dynamic water conditions, a wide range of object properties from soft to stiff,…
Legged robots have the potential to leverage obstacles to climb steep sand slopes. However, efficiently repositioning these obstacles to desired locations is challenging. Here we present DiffusiveGRAIN, a learning-based method that enables…
Tiny flying robots hold great potential for search-and-rescue, safety inspections, and environmental monitoring, but their small size limits conventional sensing-especially with poor-lighting, smoke, dust or reflective obstacles. Inspired…
Future robots will navigate perilous, remote environments with resilience and autonomy. Researchers have proposed building robots with compliant bodies to enhance robustness, but this approach often sacrifices the autonomous capabilities…
With inspiration from arthropods' exoskeletons, we designed a simple, easily manufactured, semi-rigid structure with flexible joints that can passively damp impact energy. This exoskeleton fuses the protective shell to the main robot…
In recent years, the development of robots capable of operating in both aerial and aquatic environments has gained significant attention. This study presents the design and fabrication of a novel aerial-aquatic locomotion robot (AALR).…
We investigate the dynamics of a magnetoelastic robot with a dipolar magnetic head and a slender elastic body as it performs undulatory strokes and burrows through water-saturated granular beds. The robot is actuated by an oscillating…
We present the design and implementation of HASTA (Hopper with Adjustable Stiffness for Terrain Adaptation), a vertical hopping robot with real-time tunable leg stiffness, aimed at optimizing energy efficiency across various ground profiles…
Soil moisture is a quantity of interest in many application areas including agriculture and climate modeling. Existing methods are not suitable for scale applications due to large deployment costs in high-resolution sensing applications…
We present SpaceHopper, a three-legged, small-scale robot designed for future mobile exploration of asteroids and moons. The robot weighs 5.2kg and has a body size of 245mm while using space-qualifiable components. Furthermore,…
Compared to agile legged animals, wheeled and tracked vehicles often suffer large performance loss on granular surfaces like sand and gravel. Understanding the mechanics of legged locomotion on granular media can aid the development of…
With the development of robotics, ground robots are no longer limited to planar motion. Passive height variation due to complex terrain and active height control provided by special structures on robots require a more general navigation…
Aerial insects exhibit highly agile maneuvers such as sharp braking, saccades, and body flips under disturbance. In contrast, insect-scale aerial robots are limited to tracking non-aggressive trajectories with small body acceleration. This…
Exploration of extreme environments, including caves, canyons and cliffs on low-gravity surfaces such as the Moon, Mars and asteroids can provide insight into the geological history of the solar system, origins of water, life and prospect…