7 accepted papers
Many-legged elongated robots show promise for reliable mobility on rugged landscapes. However, most studies on these systems focus on motion planning in the 2D horizontal plane (e.g., translation and rotation) without addressing rapid vertical motion. Despite their success on mild rugged terrains, r…
Limbless robots have the potential to maneuver through cluttered environments that conventional robots cannot traverse. As illustrated in their biological counterparts such as snakes and nematodes, limbless locomotors can benefit from interactions with obstacles, yet such obstacle-aided locomotion (…
Contact planning is crucial to the locomotion performance of limbless robots. Typically; the pattern by which contact is made and broken between the mechanism and its environment determines the motion of the robot. The design of these patterns; often called contact patterns; is a difficult problem.…
Sidewinder rattlesnakes generate movement through coordinated lateral and vertical traveling waves of body curvature. Previous biological and robotic studies have demonstrated that proper control and coordination of these two waves enables robust and versatile locomotion in complex environments. How…
Motion planning for mobile robots with many degrees-of-freedom (DoF) is challenging due to their high-dimensional configuration spaces. To manage this curse of dimensionality, this paper proposes a new hierarchical framework that decomposes the system into sub-systems (based on shared capabilities o…
Many quadrupedal animals have lateral degrees of freedom in their backs that assist locomotion. This paper seeks to use a robotic model to demonstrate that back bending assists not only forward motion, but also lateral and turning motions. This paper uses geometric mechanics to prescribe gaits that…
Natural substrates are often composed of particulates of varying size, from fine sand to pebbles and boulders. Robot locomotion on such heterogeneous substrates is complicated in part due to large force and kinematic fluctuations introduced by heterogeneities. To systematically explore how heterogen…