9 accepted papers
Nitinol is a smart material that can be used as an actuator, a sensor, or a structural element, and has the potential to significantly enhance the capabilities of microrobots. Femtosecond laser technology can be used to process nitinol while avoiding heat-affected zones (HAZ), thus retaining superel
Miniature-legged robots are constrained by their onboard computation and control, thus motivating the need for simple, first-principles-based geometric models that connect <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">periodic actuation or gaits</i
Discrete and periodic contact switching is a key characteristic of steady-state legged locomotion. This letter introduces a framework for modeling and analyzing this contact-switching behavior through the framework of geometric mechanics on a toy robot model that can make continuous limb swings and
Soft compliant microrobots have the potential to deliver significant societal impact when deployed in applications such as search and rescue. In this research we present mCLARI, a body compliant quadrupedal microrobot of 20mm neutral body length and 0.97g, improving on its larger predecessor, CLARI.…
The ability to efficiently and precisely manipulate objects in inaccessible environments is becoming an essential requirement for many applications of mobile robots, particularly at small sizes. Here, we propose and implement a mobile micromanipulation solution using a piezoelectric microgripper int
Here we present HAMR-Jr, a 22.5mm, 320mg quadrupedal microrobot. With eight independently actuated degrees of freedom, HAMR-Jr is, to our knowledge, the most mechanically dexterous legged robot at its scale and is capable of high-speed locomotion (13.91bodylengthss-1) at a variety of stride frequenc…
Planning locomotion trajectories for legged microrobots is challenging because of their complex morphology, high frequency passive dynamics, and discontinuous contact interactions with their environment. Consequently, such research is often driven by time-consuming experimental methods. As an altern…
This paper develops a custom motion capture system that uses vision-based methods to rapidly and accurately track the body and leg position/orientation of a 1.43g legged microrobot, the Harvard Ambulatory MicroRobot (HAMR). Two new generalized metrics for quantifying locomotion performance are defin…
We present an off-board phase estimator and controller for leg position near the resonance of the Harvard Ambulatory MicroRobot's (HAMR) two degree-of-freedom transmission. This control system is a first step towards leveraging the significant increase in stride length at transmission resonance for…