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Rocking rigid bodies appear in several shapes in everyday life: As furniture like rocking chairs and rocking cradles or as toys like rocking horses or tilting dolls. The familiar rocking motion of these objects, a non-linear combination of…
Robot manipulation of rope-like objects is an interesting problem that has some critical applications, such as autonomous robotic suturing. Solving for and controlling rope is difficult due to the complexity of rope physics and the…
In order to elucidate the process underpinning the apparently counterintuitive phenomena observed in the freefall experiments conducted by E. Hamm and J. G\'eminard [Amer. J. Phys. 78, 828 (2010)], we construct a simple dynamical model of a…
The motion of a bead on a rotating circular hoop is investigated using elementary calculus and simple symmetry arguments. The peculiar trajectories of the bead at different speeds of rotation of the hoop are presented. Phase portraits and…
This paper investigates the stability of distance-based \textit{flexible} undirected formations in the plane. Without rigidity, there exists a set of connected shapes for given distance constraints, which is called the ambit. We show that a…
It is nearly impossible to separate two interleaved phonebooks when held by their spines. A full understanding of this astonishing demonstration of solid friction in complex assemblies has remained elusive. In this Letter, we report on…
Classical rigid-bodied robotic systems are presented with proven success in theoretical development and industrial applications, are recently challenged by the emergence of soft robotics due to a growing need in physical human-robot…
The classical flexure problem of non-linear incompressible elasticity is revisited for elastic materials whose mechanical response is different in tension and compression---the so-called bimodular materials. The flexure problem is chosen to…
Inflatable structures used in soft robotics applications exhibit unique characteristics. In particular, the tip-extension structure, which grows from the tip, can grow without friction against the environment. However, these inflatable…
Icosahedral tilings, although non-periodic, are known to be characterized by their configurations of some finite size. This characterization has also been expressed in terms of a simple alternation condition. We provide an alternative proof…
The study of the motion of a rigid body on a plane (RBP motion) is usually one of the most challenging topics that students face in introductory physics courses. In this paper, we discuss a couple of problems which are typically used in…
We present a continuation method that enables one to track or continue branches of periodic orbits directly in an experiment when a parameter is changed. A control-based setup in combination with Newton iterations ensures that the periodic…
Humans can balance very well during walking, even when perturbed. But it seems difficult to achieve robust walking for bipedal robots. Here we describe the simplest balance controller that leads to robust walking for a linear inverted…
Brownian motion and viscoelasticity of semiflexible polymers is a subject that has been studied for many years. Still, rigorous analysis has been hindered due to the difficulty in handling the constraint that polymer chains cannot be…
Bristle-bots are legged robots that can be easily made out of a toothbrush head and a small vibrating engine. Despite their simple appearance, the mechanism enabling them to propel themselves by exploiting friction with the substrate is far…
This paper presents an alternative way to the dynamic modeling of a rotational inverted pendulum using the classic mechanics known as Euler-Lagrange allows to find motion equations that describe our model. It also has a design of the basic…
We propose a method to spatially confine or corral the movements of a micropendulum via the optical forces produced by two simultaneously excited optical modes of a photonic molecule comprising two microspherical cavities. We discuss how…
The construction of needlet-type wavelets on sections of the spin line bundles over the sphere has been recently addressed in Geller and Marinucci (2008), and Geller et al. (2008,2009). Here we focus on an alternative proposal for needlets…
This paper presents a novel design for a compact, lightweight 6-axis force/torque sensor intended for use in legged robots. The design promotes easy manufacturing and cost reduction, while introducing innovative calibration methods that…
Two particularly simple ideal clocks exhibiting intrinsic circular motion with the speed of light and opposite spin alignment are described. The clocks are singled out by singularities of an inverse Legendre transformation for relativistic…