locomotion

Few things make the career jump from regional cuisine delicacy to robotics actuator. Yet, in research vaguely reminiscent of RoboCop, scientists have used skeletal muscle from a literal frog leg as an actuator to control a tiny robotic manta ray.

Engineers continue to draw inspiration from nature. Scientists from New York University have developed a robot that resembles a fish, and can be easily scaled up or down in size to explore different water bodies.

Engineers used adversarial inverse reinforcement learning to train robots to respond dynamically to uneven terrain and loss of limbs, a training system transferrable to dissimilar robots. And they did so using a stick insect as a role model.

The sandfish lizard moves very efficiently through the sand, and not surprisingly, it doesn't use wheels to do so. Scientists have now copied the reptile's swimming motion in an experimental Mars rover that outperforms others in sandy soil.

Most of nature – including humans – is symmetrical, and as creations reflect their creators, many robots we create today feature this symmetry. Flaunting this approach, researchers have created a sea-urchin-like robot with no perceivable symmetry.

The new “stingraybot” from a team at ETH Zurich (the Federal Institute of Technology of Switzerland) offers enormous promise for surgery, medical care, wildlife biology, robotics, and more, thanks to muscular membranes of microbubbles.

Unlike TARS in the movie, TARS3D doesn’t need human puppeteers to move. Its biotranscending morphology delivers “multiple previously unexplored locomotion modes,” and further exploration offers a “promising pathway for multimodal robotics”

Although we've seen many robotic water striders over the years, scientists are still finding new aspects of the insects to replicate. Recently, for instance, researchers created a strider-bot that zips across the water's surface via fans on its feet.

Although soft-bodied robots can be simple devices, they typically require onboard electronics to control their locomotion. Such is not the case with a new bot, however, which utilizes a phenomenon of physics to automatically move its inflatable legs.

Quadruped "robot dogs" may move quite a bit like their canine counterparts on land, but they're not nearly as good at swimming (although some can walk underwater). Such is not the case with a new mini-dog-bot, however, which is an expert at doing the dog-paddle.

Flying robots do have advantages over their ground-going counterparts, but they're not very energy-efficient. A new bot addresses that tradeoff by using a wing-assisted mechanism to hop instead of walking or flying in the traditional sense.

If a robot is being used to gather data in sensitive aquatic environments, it shouldn't have a whirring propeller that could harm wildlife or get caught in weeds. A new bot addresses that issue by utilizing a swimming mechanism inspired by flatworms.