6 accepted papers
Much current study of legged locomotion has rightly focused on foot traction forces, including on granular media. Future legged millirobots will need to go through terrain, such as brush or other vegetation, where the body contact forces significantly affect locomotion. In this work, a (previously d…
This paper analyzes and implements two novel turning strategies for underactuated legged robots that leverage contact of an active tail against terrain. The first strategy produces a sustained turn with a tail dragging against the ground during forward locomotion. The second strategy produces a rapi…
As small legged robots for search and rescue are deployed in collapsed buildings with unstructured terrain and steep drop-offs, they run the risk of flipping over and becoming incapacitated. A single degree of freedom low-mass tail is added to a 77.5 g, 18 cm long VelociRoACH legged robot with prote…
Legged robots can explore unstructured environments more effectively than wheeled robots, but high turning rate tracking is still a challenging problem, particularly on varying surfaces. Previous steering methods with small robots have shown high turn rates, but usually only on a limited set of surf…
In this paper, we propose a trajectory-adjustable integrated milli-scale jumping-crawling robot with improved ability to overcome obstacles compared to a robot that can only crawl. The robot employs a novel jumping module with enhanced energy storing-capacity and a height-adjustable active trigger.
Cooperation primitives for climbing steps were developed for a system of two 10 cm long VelociRoACH hexapedal legged robots with a removable connection. When performed sequentially, the set of primitives allow the team of two robots to climb a step on the order of their body length. These primitives