Research

We identified a simple walking gait common to a number of extant fish species (e.g., lungfish, bichirs, catfish) that we modeled with simulated and physical robots. The basic gait does not require much anatomy specifically adapted to locomotion on land, so this has implications for the evolution of terrestriality in ancient fish hundreds of millions of years ago!

We expand upon the ideas of bioinspired robotics, which often focuses on the study of a single animal in the present day, to include the axis of evolutionary time history. Instead of closely investigating a single species, our goal is create robots to study natural principles about animals (e.g., legged locomotion) that can then be used to explore how and why biological features evolved or didn't evolve in certain directions. 

Starfish have an amazingly versatile locomotion capabilities, walking over a variety of terrain in a variety of postures. This is done using chemical adhesion administered via an array of hydraulic tube feet. In these works, we couple soft suction discs (passive and active suction) with soft tube foot actuators to create robust walking via adhesion!

Soft materials hold great promise for creating efficient swimming robots. This includes passive deformations during interactions with fluids or active shape change that helps to generate thrust. In these works, we created robots that swim via jet propulsion and fin flapping that leverage the softness of their designs to create better locomotion.

A common drawback of soft fluidic actuators is that a single degree of freedom requires either one pump or one valve, each of which drastically increases the weight and rigidity of the overall system. These works attempt to use mechanisms or soft structures to control many fluidic lines with comparatively few electromechanical components with applications for haptic displays or complex soft robots like starfish robots!