Related papers: TerraSkipper: A Centimeter-Scale Robot for Multi-T…
Aerial robots the size of a honeybee (~100 mg) have advantages over larger robots because of their small size, low mass and low materials cost. Previous iterations have demonstrated controlled flight but were difficult to fabricate because…
Modern climbing robots have risen to great heights, but mechanisms meant to scale cliffs often locomote slowly and over-cautiously on level ground. Here we introduce T-RHex, an iteration on the classic cockroach-inspired hexapod that has…
Designing soft robots poses considerable challenges: automated design approaches may be particularly appealing in this field, as they promise to optimize complex multi-material machines with very little or no human intervention.…
Design of robots at the small scale is a trial-and-error based process, which is costly and time-consuming. There are few dynamic simulation tools available to accurately predict the motion or performance of untethered microrobots as they…
Worm-inspired robots provide an effective locomotion strategy for constrained environments by combining cyclic body deformation with alternating anchoring. For compliant robots, however, the interaction between deformable anchoring…
Motion planning for a multi-limbed climbing robot must consider the robot's posture, joint torques, and how it uses contact forces to interact with its environment. This paper focuses on motion planning for a robot that uses nontraditional…
Aerial insects can effortlessly navigate dense vegetation, whereas similarly sized aerial robots typically depend on offboard sensors and computation to maintain stable flight. This disparity restricts insect-scale robots to operation…
Bipedal robots promise the ability to traverse rough terrain quickly and efficiently, and indeed, humanoid robots can now use strong ankles and careful foot placement to traverse discontinuous terrain. However, more agile underactuated…
Soft robots have drawn significant attention recently for their ability to achieve rich shapes when interacting with complex environments. However, their elasticity and flexibility compared to rigid robots also pose significant challenges…
Flying robots, such as quadrotor drones, offer new possibilities for human-robot interaction but often pose safety risks due to fast-spinning propellers, rigid structures, and noise. In contrast, lighter-than-air flapping-wing robots,…
The gaits of undulating animals arise from a complex interaction of their central nervous system, muscle, connective tissue, bone, and environment. As a simplifying assumption, many previous studies have often assumed that sufficient…
Wheeled rovers have been the primary choice for lunar exploration due to their speed and efficiency. However, deeper areas, such as lunar caves and craters, require the mobility of legged robots. To do so, appropriate end effectors must be…
Snake robots are inspired by the ability of biological snakes to move over rock, grass, leaves, soil, up trees, along pavement and more. Their ability to move in multiple distinct environments is due to their legless locomotion strategy,…
Centipede-like robots offer an effective and robust solution to navigation over complex terrain with minimal sensing. However, when climbing over obstacles, such multi-legged robots often elevate their center-of-mass into unstable…
A biomorphic propulsion systemfor underwater robotic fish is presented. The system is based on a combination of an elastic chord with a tail fin fixed on it. The tail fin is connected to servomotor by two symmetric movable thrusts…
The theories of aero- and hydrodynamics predict animal movement and device design in air and water through the computation of lift, drag, and thrust forces. Although models of terrestrial legged locomotion have focused on interactions with…
Natural selection has tuned many flying and swimming animals across different species to share the same narrow design space for optimal high-efficient and energy-saving locomotion, e.g., their dimensionless Strouhal numbers St that relate…
Centipedes exhibit great maneuverability in diverse environments due to their many legs and body-driven control. By leveraging similar morphologies and control strategies, their robotic counterparts also demonstrate effective terrestrial…
My research objective is to explicitly bridge the gap between high computational performance and low power dissipation of robot on-board hardware by designing a bio-inspired tapered whisker neuromorphic computing (also called reservoir…
This paper presents AquaMILR+, an untethered limbless robot designed for agile navigation in complex aquatic environments. The robot features a bilateral actuation mechanism that models musculoskeletal actuation in many anguilliform…