相关论文: Using Surface-Motions for Locomotion of Microscopi…

Friction, the resistive force between two surfaces sliding past each other, is at the core of a wide diversity of locomotion schemes. While such schemes are somewhat understood for homogeneous environments, locomotion based on friction in…

Microspine grippers are small spines commonly found on insect legs that reinforce surface interaction by engaging with asperities to increase shear force and traction. An array of such microspines, when integrated into the limbs or…

Soft growing robots are proposed for use in applications such as complex manipulation tasks or navigation in disaster scenarios. Safe interaction and ease of production promote the usage of this technology, but soft robots can be…

This paper presents a first contribution to the design of a small aerial robot for inhabited microgravity environments, such as orbiting space stations. In particular, we target a fleet of robots for collaborative tasks with humans, such as…

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…

When a big and heavy robot moves, it exerts large forces on the environment and on its own structure, its angular momentum can varysubstantially, and even the robot's structure can deform if there is a mechanical weakness. Under these…

Mudskippers are unique amphibious fish capable of locomotion in diverse environments, including terrestrial surfaces, aquatic habitats, and highly viscous substrates such as mud. This versatile locomotion is largely enabled by their…

Discrete simulation methods are efficient tools to investigate the complex behaviors of complex fluids made of either dry granular materials or dilute suspensions. By contrast, materials made of soft and/or concentrated units (emulsions,…

This paper presents the design of a small aerial robot for inhabited microgravity environments, such as orbiting space stations (e.g., ISS). In particular, we target a fleet of robots, called Space CoBots, for collaborative tasks with…

We studied locomotion of a crawler on a thin Newtonian fluid film whose viscosity varied spatially. We first derived a general locomotion velocity formula with fluid viscosity variations via the lubrication theory. For further analysis, the…

Accurate and autonomous transportation of micro-objects and biological cells can enable significant advances in a wide variety of research disciplines. Here, we present a novel, vision-based, model-free microrobotic pushing algorithm for…

Self-propulsion and navigation due to the sensing of environmental conditions - such as durotaxis and chemotaxis - are remarkable properties of biological cells that cannot be reproduced by single-component self-propelled particles. We…

Although wheeled robots have been predominant for planetary exploration, their geometry limits their capabilities when traveling over steep slopes, through rocky terrains, and in microgravity. Legged robots equipped with grippers are a…

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…

The presence of a viscoelastic mechanism distinctly different from the segmental a-relaxation and the Rouse modes within the glass-rubber transition zone of polymers had been justified by theoretical considerations, and subsequently…

We propose to make the physical characteristics of a robot oscillate while it learns to improve its behavioral performance. We consider quantities such as mass, actuator strength, and size that are usually fixed in a robot, and show that…

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…

Torque-driven microscale swimming robots, or microrotors, hold significant potential in biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, and micromanipulation. This paper addresses the challenge of…

In this study, we use numerical simulations to investigate the flow field induced by a single magnetic microrobot rotating with a constant angular speed about an axis perpendicular to an underlying surface. A parallel solver for steady…

Conventionally, a microscopic particle that performs a reciprocal stroke cannot move through its environment. This is because at small scales, the response of simple Newtonian fluids is purely viscous and flows are time-reversible. We show…