29 accepted papers
As environmental disasters happen more frequently and severely, seeking the source of pollutants or harmful particulates using plume tracking becomes even more important. Plume tracking on small quadrotors would allow these systems to operate around humans and fly in more confined spaces, but can be
Microswimmers are sub-millimeter swimming robots that show potential as a platform for controllable locomotion in applications, including targeted cargo delivery and minimally invasive surgery. To be viable for these target applications, microswimmers will eventually need to be able to navigate envi
Miniaturizing legged robot platforms is challenging due to hardware limitations that constrain the number, power density, and precision of actuators at that size. By leveraging design principles of quasi-passive walking robots at any scale, stable locomotion and steering can be achieved with simple
This study presents the development, characterization, and demonstration of a tunable substrate for small jumping robots. Jumping robots in the literature are typically evaluated when jumping from rigid surfaces, in contrast to surfaces with more significant compliance or damping that are encountere
Understanding airflow around a drone is critical for performing advanced maneuvers while maintaining flight stability. Recent research has worked to understand this flow by employing 2D and 3D flow sensors to measure flow from a single source like wind or the drone’s relative motion. Our current wor…
In this work, we present a thin-film shape memory alloy microactuator with a magnetic spring. This novel actuator design utilizes two permanent magnets and 3D-printed magnet holders to effectively apply a tensile strain on the NiTi thin-film. This actuator is expected to generate 8.7 mN of blocking…
Creating microscale actuated mechanisms in 3D space is extremely challenging due to limitations in microfabrication processes. In this work, we present a 3D-printed adaptive microgripper that is driven by thin-film NiTi microactuators with 3D-printed linkage mechanisms. The microgripper's fingers ar…
Flapping wing micro aerial vehicles face challenges in sensing and reacting to disturbances like wind gusts. This work introduces a new microscale bio-inspired digital strain sensor to detect these perturbations. The sensor is designed to change logic states when a specified strain threshold has bee…
Robots that use impulsive mechanisms to achieve high-speed and high-powered motion are becoming more common and better understood, but control of these systems remains relatively rudimentary. Among robots that use spring actuation to generate motion, robot actuation and mechanisms are usually not co…
Whisker-based tactile sensors have the potential to perform fast and accurate 3D mappings of the environment, complementing vision-based methods under conditions of glare, reflection, proximity, and occlusion. However, current algorithms for mapping with whiskers make assumptions about the condition…
The designs of origami-and kirigami-inspired robots enable configurations from 2D to 3D shapes, lightweight systems, and take advantage of rapid fabrication techniques. These features have been explored for robotics in applications ranging from aerospace to medical devices. However, achieving revers
We present simplified 2D dynamic models of the 3D, passive dynamic inspired walking gait of a physical quasi-passive walking robot. Quasi-passive walkers are robots that integrate passive walking principles and some form of actuation. Our ultimate goal is to better understand the dynamics of actuate…
Moths use hundreds of strain sensors (campaniform sensilla) on each wing to quickly respond to perturbations that may otherwise destabilize the moth during flight. A similar sensing approach could help stabilize micro-aerial vehicles (MAVs), but large sensor arrays are challenging due to the wiring…
Effective autonomous indoor flight requires an ability to sense and navigate ground, ceiling, and walls. While this can be accomplished in many ways including vision, one bio-inspired approach that is not well studied uses the detection of pressure changes when flying close to surfaces. As an exampl
The development of whisker-based sensing systems faces at least two important technical challenges: scaling up the number of whiskers to large arrays while retaining a simple interface; and detecting the wide variety of stimuli that biological whiskers can sense, including both direct touch (contact
With reduction in the scale of unmanned air vehicles, there is an increasing need for lightweight, compact, low-power sensors and alternate sensing modalities to facilitate flight control and navigation. This paper presents a novel method to fabricate a micro-scale artificial hair sensor that is cap…
This work presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of an airflow sensor inspired by the whiskers of animals. The body of the whisker was replaced with a fin structure in order to increase the air resistance. The fin was suspended by a micro-fabricated spring system at the bottom. A per…
Disturbance estimation for Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) is crucial for robustness and safety. In this paper, we use novel, bio-inspired airflow sensors to measure the airflow acting on a MAV, and we fuse this information in an Unscented Kalman filter (UKF) to simultaneously estimate the three-dimens…
This work demonstrates 3D printed soft actuators with complex shapes and remote actuation using an external magnetic field. Instead of embedding magnetic particles in a polymeric matrix, we fabricated a novel ferrofluid-based actuator, in which the fluid can be moved to different locations in the ac…
This work presents the design, modeling, and fabrication of a whisker-like sensor capable of measuring the whisker's angular displacement as well as the applied moments at the base of the whisker. The sensor takes advantage of readily accessible and low-cost 3D magnetic sensors to transduce whisker…
A novel wearable device for gesture recognition was developed and tested on five subjects. The low-cost, wireless wearable device was engineered with a set of seven flexible capacitive touch electrodes sewn into an armband to be worn on the forearm between the wrist and elbow. These capacitive touch…
Sensors to measure quadcopter ground effect are often relatively large, heavy, and require significant power, which restricts their applicability when it comes to small quadcopters and other aircraft that require lightweight and non-obstructive solutions. This paper presents the design of an elastom…
This paper describes an intuitive method for the design and fabrication of small-scale robots with multi-material compliant mechanisms in 3D. The rigid components are 3D printed, and flexures are inserted into the rigid components, creating the final mechanism. The assembled mechanisms are robust, r…
BRIDGE bot is a 158 g, 10.7 × 8.9 × 6.5 cm3, magnetic-wheeled robot designed to traverse and inspect steel bridges. Utilizing custom magnetic wheels, the robot is able to securely adhere to the bridge in any orientation. The body platform features flexible, multi-material legs that enable a variety…
This work describes a method to study terrestrial robot locomotion at small scales (robot mass <; 2 g) and is inspired by incredible feats of locomotion by natural organisms like insects at these same scales. 3-D printing was used to fabricate lightweight robots and magnets were embedded in the robo
This work demonstrates an all-elastomer MEMS capacitive strain sensor with high dynamic range (5000:1), and features an inexpensive molding microfabrication process. The sensor is comprised of conductive elastometric comb capacitors embedded in a dielectric. Two different sensor designs, lateral com…
This work presents a method for folding 3D structures from planar microfabricated components using magnetics and an initial impulsive force. A scaling analysis demonstrates that magnetic folding can be particularly favorable at small scales and this analysis is validated through both a dynamic simul
Turning in small legged robots often requires extra actuators and mechanisms which consume energy and increase weight. Controllable friction on the feet of underactuated legged robots can provide extra degrees of freedom for dynamic turning. Here, we present preliminary results demonstrating that lo
Kapton strain-based hair sensors were designed and fabricated to measure flow on a micro air vehicle. The fabrication process is carried out using a single mask and a combination of cleanroom and regular lab room processing. The processing resulted in successful realization of 6.4 mm long sensors wi…