相关论文: Modular electronic microrobots with on board senso…
Microcapsules are a key class of microscale materials with applications in areas ranging from personal care to biomedicine, and with increasing potential to act as extracellular matrix (ECM) models of hollow organs or tissues. Such capsules…
Interfaces between a water droplet and a network of pillars produce eventually superhydrophobic, self-cleaning properties. Considering the surface fraction of the surface in interaction with water, it is possible to tune precisely the…
The transport of small quantities of liquid on a solid surface is inhibited by the resistance to motion caused by the contact between the liquid and the solid. To overcome such resistance, motion can be externally driven through gradients…
Quadruped robots are progressively being integrated into human environments. Despite the growing locomotion capabilities of quadrupedal robots, their interaction with objects in realistic scenes is still limited. While additional robotic…
Wearable robots are limited by their actuators performances because they must bear the weight of their own power system and energy source. This paper explores the idea of leveraging hybrid modes to meet multiple operating points with a…
Learning-based robotics research driven by data demands a new approach to robot hardware design-one that serves as both a platform for policy execution and a tool for embodied data collection to train policies. We introduce ToddlerBot, a…
All-dielectric optical metasurfaces can locally control the amplitude and phase of light at the nanoscale, enabling arbitrary wavefront shaping. However, lack of post-fabrication tunability has limited the true potential of metasurfaces for…
It may be possible to reinvent how microelectronics are made using a two step process: (1) Synthesizing modular, nanometer-scale components -- transistors, sensors, and other devices -- and suspending them in a liquid "ink" for storage or…
Modular robotics enables the development of versatile and adaptive robotic systems with autonomous reconfiguration. This paper presents a modular robotic system in which each module has independent actuation, battery power, and control,…
Encapsulation of chemicals using polymer membranes enables to control their transport and delivery for applications such as agrochemistry or detergency. To rationalize the design of polymer capsules, it is necessary to understand how the…
Self-assembly enables multi-robot systems to merge diverse capabilities and accomplish tasks beyond the reach of individual robots. Incorporating varied docking mechanisms layouts (DMLs) can enhance robot versatility or reduce costs.…
Arrays of H-shape microfluidic channels connecting two different fluidic reservoirs have been built with silicon/SU8 microfabrication technologies utilized in production of thermal inkjet printheads. The fluids are delivered to the channels…
Modularity in robotics holds great potential. In principle, modular robots can be disassembled and reassembled in different robots, and possibly perform new tasks. Nevertheless, actually exploiting modularity is yet an unsolved problem:…
Macroscale robotic systems have demonstrated great capabilities of high speed, precise, and agile functions. However, the ability of soft robots to perform complex tasks, especially in centimeter and millimeter scale, remains limited due to…
Circumnavigation control is useful in real-world applications such as entrapping a hostile target. In this paper, we consider a heterogeneous multi-robot system where robots have different physical properties, such as maximum movement…
Magnetic microrobots have been developed for navigating microscale environments by means of remote magnetic fields. However, limited propulsion speeds at small scales remain an issue in the maneuverability of these devices as magnetic force…
This work explores the challenges of creating a scalable and robust robot navigation system that can traverse both indoor and outdoor environments to reach distant goals. We propose a navigation system architecture called IntentionNet that…
The motion of biological micro-robots -- similar to that of swimming microorganisms such as bacteria or spermatozoa -- is governed by different physical rules than what we experience in our daily life. This is particularly due to the…
Traversing 3-D complex environments has always been a significant challenge for legged locomotion. Existing methods typically rely on external sensors such as vision and lidar to preemptively react to obstacles by acquiring environmental…
Applications such as digital microfluidics and bio-diagnostics rely on droplet locomotion. A prominent example of such motion is durotaxis, a phenomenon that requires a stiffness gradient along a surface for the transport of liquids, cells,…