10 accepted papers
Although the biologically flexible flippers of the cormorant (Phalacrocorax) are believed to be one of the most important features to achieve optimal swimming performance before take off, studies on a deformable bionic flipper with a non-uniformly distributed stiffness are rare. In this letter, to g
Remoras employ their adhesive discs to rapidly attach to and detach from a wide range of marine surfaces. By analyzing high-speed images of remoras' (Echeneis naucrates) hitchhiking behavior, we describe the fish's detachment mechanism as a lip curling up to break the seal between the disc and subst…
Aquatic-aerial multimodal vehicle is a new concept aircraft that can freely shuttle between water and air. Some of the natural organisms provide the inspiration to realize this multi-locomotion. Most of current prototypes use rigid link mechanisms or hinges to morph the structure thus to adapt to th…
This paper presents a soft actuator embedded with conductive liquid metal and shape memory epoxy (SME) which function together to enable self-sensing, tunable mechanical degrees of freedom (DoF), and variable stiffness. We embedded thermoplastic shape memory epoxy in the bottom portion of the actuat…
There have been increasing demands for developing robotic system combining camera and inertial measurement unit in navigation task, due to their low-cost, lightweight and complementary properties. In this paper, we present a Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) system which can utilize sparse depth to est…
The quality of holes has important influence on the mechanical strength, assembly quality and life of aircraft, and inferior quality holes may even cause airplane crash and casualties. The perpendicular accuracy of holes during drilling is crucial one of all the factors influencing the quality of ho…
Calibration is often an important and necessary step in the use of image-guided systems. In the case of the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$AX=YB$</tex-math></inline-formula> problem, the relative
This paper presents a novel design for the soft continuum manipulator based on beehive structure. Our design inspiration derives from the beehive hexagon structure, which has some characteristics of compact layout, low material consumption, thinner thickness of wall, and higher structure strength. T…
This paper presents modular self-reconfigurable robots for grasping an unknown object based on a grasp quality metric. The presented self-reconfiguration approach makes use of basic motions performed by individual robots to change the structure. The method to solve for forward kinematics as well as…
Fish caudal fin is a prominent example of biological propulsion, in which the caudal peduncle, fin rays and fin membrane together form a dynamic locomotory system. In this paper, we developed a bio-robotic model to mimic the caudal fin structure and kinematics of Bluegill Sunfish (Lepomis macrochiru…