Related papers: TerraSkipper: A Centimeter-Scale Robot for Multi-T…

Legged robots have the ability to adapt their walking posture to navigate confined spaces due to their high degrees of freedom. However, this has not been exploited in most common multilegged platforms. This paper presents a deformable…

Fishes, cetaceans, and many other aquatic vertebrates undulate their bodies to propel themselves through water. Swimming requires an intricate interplay between sensing the environment, making decisions, controlling internal dynamics, and…

Legged locomotion on flowing ground ({\em e.g.} granular media) is unlike locomotion on hard ground because feet experience both solid- and fluid-like forces during surface penetration. Recent bio-inspired legged robots display speed…

Underwater soft grippers exhibit potential for applications such as monitoring, research, and object retrieval. However, existing underwater gripping techniques frequently cause disturbances to ecosystems. In response to this challenge, we…

This work tries to contribute to the design of legged robots with capabilities boosted through thruster-assisted locomotion. Our long-term goal is the development of robots capable of negotiating unstructured environments, including land…

Legged robots need to be capable of walking on diverse terrain conditions. In this paper, we present a novel reinforcement learning framework for learning locomotion on non-rigid dynamic terrains. Specifically, our framework can generate…

This paper presents an aerially deployable crawler designed for adaptive locomotion and manipulation within tree canopies. The system combines compliant microspine-based tracks, a dual-track rotary gripper, and an elastic tail, enabling…

This paper presents a couple of interesting ideas: a telescopic actuator design and a bio-inspired sea urchin robot. The "spines" of the sea urchin robot consist of fourteen telescopic actuators equally distributed over it's spherical body.…

This paper introduces FlipWalker, a novel underactuated robot locomotion system inspired by Jacob's Ladder illusion toy, designed to traverse challenging terrains where wheeled robots often struggle. Like the Jacob's Ladder toy, FlipWalker…

Inchworm crawling allows for both quasistatic and dynamic gaits at a wide range of actuation frequencies. This locomotion mechanism is common in nonskeletal animals and exploited extensively in the bio-inspired field of soft robotics. In…

Dynamic bipedal robot locomotion has achieved remarkable success due in part to recent advances in trajectory generation and nonlinear control for stabilization. A key assumption utilized in both theory and experiments is that the robot's…

Although bipedal locomotion provides the ability to traverse unstructured environments, it requires careful planning and control to safely walk across without falling. This poses an integrated challenge for the robot to perceive, plan, and…

Compensating for slip and skid is crucial for mobile robots navigating outdoor terrains. In these challenging environments, slipping and skidding introduce uncertainties into trajectory tracking systems, potentially compromising the safety…

Dynamic quadrupedal locomotion over rough terrains reveals remarkable progress over the last few decades. Small-scale quadruped robots are adequately flexible and adaptable to traverse uneven terrains along sagittal direction, such as…

A distinctive feature of quadrupeds that is integral to their locomotion is the tail. Tails serve many purposes in biological systems including propulsion, counterbalance, and stabilization while walking, running, climbing, or jumping.…

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…

Snakes can move through almost any terrain. Although their locomotion on flat surfaces using planar gaits is inherently stable, when snakes deform their body out of plane to traverse complex terrain, maintaining stability becomes a…

Limbless crawling is ubiquitous in biology, from cells to organisms. We develop and analyze a model for the dynamics of one-dimensional elastic crawlers, subject to active stress and deformation-dependent friction with the substrate. We…

Bipedal robots are a fascinating and advanced category of robots designed to mimic human form and locomotion. The development of the bipedal robots is a significant milestone in robotics. However, even the most advanced bipedal robots are…

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…