8 accepted papers
Control policy learning for modular robot locomotion has previously been limited to proprioceptive feedback and flat terrain. This paper develops policies for modular systems with vision traversing more challenging environments. These modular robots can be reconfigured to form many different designs…
Robots have been used in all sorts of automation, and yet the design of robots remains mainly a manual task. We seek to provide design tools to automate the design of robots themselves. An important challenge in robot design automation is the large and complex design search space which grows exponen…
Modular robots are made up of a set of components which can be configured and reconfigured to form customized robots for a wide range of tasks. Fully utilizing the flexibility of modular robots is challenging, as it requires the identification of optimal modular designs for each given task, often wi…
Snake robots composed of alternating single-axis pitch and yaw joints have many internal degrees of freedom, which make them capable of versatile three-dimensional locomotion. In motion planning process, snake robot motions are often designed kinematically by a chronological sequence of continuous b
Snake robots have the potential to locomote through tightly packed spaces, but turning effectively within unmodelled and unsensed environments remains challenging. Inspired by a behavior observed in the tiny nematode worm C. elegans, we propose a novel in-place turning gait for elongated limbless ro…
This letter addresses the challenge of determining the optimal design of a customizable robot for a given task. We present a motion planner that not only prescribes a path, but also synthesizes the robot design to follow that path. Our approach treats design variables as part of an inverse kinematic
Modular robots can be rapidly reconfigured into customized articulated legged morphologies capable of mobile manipulation and inspection. However, current gait generation methods do not keep pace with the speed of physical reconfiguration. This work focuses on quickly creating gaits for modular legg…
Having many degrees of freedom is both a blessing and a curse. A mechanism with a large number of degrees of freedom can better comply to and therefore better move in complex environments. Yet, possessing many degrees of freedom is only an advantage if the system is capable of coordinating them to a…