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All-around, real-time navigation and sensing across the water environments by miniature soft robotics are promising, for their merits of small size, high agility and good compliance to the unstructured surroundings. In this paper, we…
We present an open-source untethered quadrupedal soft robot platform for dynamic locomotion (e.g., high-speed running and backflipping). The robot is mostly soft (80 vol.%) while driven by four geared servo motors. The robot's soft body and…
Legged robots face significant challenges in moving and navigating on deformable and highly yielding terrain such as mud. We present a resistive force model for legged foot-mud interactions. The model captures rheological behaviors such as…
Snakes can traverse almost all types of environments by bending their elongate bodies in 3-D to interact with the terrain. Similarly, a snake robot is a promising platform to perform critical tasks in various environments. Understanding how…
Objects moving in fluids experience patterns of stress on their surfaces determined by their motion and the geometry of nearby boundaries. Fish and underwater robots can use these patterns for navigation. This paper extends this…
Taking inspiration from the crawling motion of biological cells on a substrate, we consider a physical model of self-propulsion where the spatio-temporal driving can involve both, a mechanical actuation by active force couples, and a…
It has been a great challenge to develop robots that are able to perform complex movement patterns with high speed and, simultaneously, high accuracy. Copepods are animals found in freshwater and saltwater habitats that can have extremely…
While undulatory swimming of elongate limbless robots has been extensively studied in open hydrodynamic environments, less research has been focused on limbless locomotion in complex, cluttered aquatic environments. Motivated by the concept…
Robotic mobility in microgravity is necessary to expand human utilization and exploration of outer space. Bio-inspired multi-legged robots are a possible solution for safe and precise locomotion. However, a dynamic motion of a robot in…
Amphibious robots, operating seamlessly across land and water, are advancing applications in conservation, disaster response, and defense. Their performance depends on locomotion mechanisms, actuation technologies, and sensor-control…
This paper introduces SCALER, a quadrupedal robot that demonstrates climbing on bouldering walls, overhangs, ceilings and trotting on the ground. SCALER is one of the first high-degrees of freedom four-limbed robots that can free-climb…
Snake robots are characterized by their ability to navigate through small spaces and loose terrain by utilizing efficient cyclic forms of locomotion. Soft snake robots are a subset of these robots which utilize soft, compliant actuators to…
Advances in planetary robotics have led to wheeled robots that have beamed back invaluable science data from the surface of the Moon and Mars. However, these large wheeled robots are unable to access rugged environments such as cliffs,…
The schooling behavior of fish is hypothesized to confer many survival benefits, including foraging success, safety from predators, and energy savings through hydrodynamic interactions when swimming in formation. Underwater robot…
This paper introduces Bruce, the CSIRO Dynamic Hexapod Robot capable of autonomous, dynamic locomotion over difficult terrain. This robot is built around Apptronik linear series elastic actuators, and went from design to deployment in under…
Terrain-aware perception holds the potential to improve the robustness and accuracy of autonomous robot navigation in the wilds, thereby facilitating effective off-road traversals. However, the lack of multi-modal perception across various…
Robotics would gain by replicating the remarkable agility of arthropods in navigating complex environments. Here we consider the control of multi-legged systems which have 6 or more legs. Current multi-legged control strategies in robots…
Task space trajectory tracking for quadruped robots plays a crucial role on achieving dexterous maneuvers in unstructured environments. To fulfill the control objective, the robot should apply forces through the contact of the legs with the…
Multi-legged robots with six or more legs are not in common use, despite designs with superior stability, maneuverability, and a low number of actuators being available for over 20 years. This may be in part due to the difficulty in…
The capability of effectively moving on complex terrains such as sand and gravel can empower our robots to robustly operate in outdoor environments, and assist with critical tasks such as environment monitoring, search-and-rescue, and…