30 citations · 69 across the 13 of their papers we have counts for
14 papers
Towards insect-like distributed proprioception in actuators and appendages for flapping-wing insect-scale aerial robots
Alexander Hedrick, Arvind Gupta, Kaushik Jayaram
Modern flapping-wing insect-scale air vehicles display agility similar to that of their insect counterparts; however, these impressive maneuvers are only possible with off-board se…
Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mechanical Intelligence: Summary Report
Victoria A. Webster-Wood, Nicholas Gravish, Amir Alavi +37
This report provides a summary of the outcomes of the Interdisciplinary Workshop on Mechanical Intelligence held in 2024. Mechanical Intelligence (MI) represents the phenomenon tha…
Multilaminate piezoelectric polymer actuators for insect-scale softrobots
Nicholas Gunter, Heiko Kabutz, Kaushik Jayaram +1
Piezoelectric ceramics enable fast, precise, and powerful actuation with integrated sensing in insect-scale robots. However, they are brittle, failing at low strains limiting its a…
Design of a bioinspired robophysical antenna for insect-scale tactile perception and navigation
Parker McDonnell, Lingsheng Meng, Hari Krishna Hariprasad +5
The American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) uses its soft antennae to guide decision making by extracting rich tactile information from tens of thousands of distributed mechanos…
mCLARI: a shape-morphing insect-scale robot capable of omnidirectional terrain-adaptive locomotion in laterally confined spaces
Heiko Kabutz, Alexander Hedrick, Parker McDonnell +1
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…
Femtosecond laser fabricated nitinol living hinges for millimeter-sized robots
Alexander Hedrick, Heiko Kabutz, Lawrence Smith +2
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. Femt…
Geometrically Modulable Gait Design for Quadrupeds
Hari Krishna Hari Prasad, Ross L. Hatton, Kaushik Jayaram
Miniature-legged robots are constrained by their onboard computation and control, thus motivating the need for simple, first-principles-based geometric models that connect \emph{pe…
Design of CLARI: A miniature modular origami passive shape-morphing robot
Heiko Kabutz, Kaushik Jayaram
Miniature robots provide unprecedented access to confined environments and show promising potential for novel applications such as search-and-rescue and high-value asset inspection…
A Population-Level Analysis of Neural Dynamics in Robust Legged Robots
Eugene R. Rush, Christoffer Heckman, Kaushik Jayaram +1
Recurrent neural network-based reinforcement learning systems are capable of complex motor control tasks such as locomotion and manipulation, however, much of their underlying mech…
Geometric Mechanics of Contact-Switching Systems
Hari Krishna Hari Prasad, Ross L. Hatton, Kaushik Jayaram
Discrete and periodic contact switching is a key characteristic of steady-state legged locomotion. This paper introduces a framework for modeling and analyzing this contact-switchi…
From Data-Fitting to Discovery: Interpreting the Neural Dynamics of Motor Control through Reinforcement Learning
Eugene R. Rush, Kaushik Jayaram, J. Sean Humbert
In motor neuroscience, artificial recurrent neural networks models often complement animal studies. However, most modeling efforts are limited to data-fitting, and the few that exa…
Scaling down an insect-size microrobot, HAMR-VI into HAMR-Jr
Kaushik Jayaram, Jennifer Shum, Samantha Castellanos +2
Here we present HAMR-Jr, a \SI{22.5}{\milli\meter}, \SI{320}{\milli\gram} quadrupedal microrobot. With eight independently actuated degrees of freedom, HAMR-Jr is, to our knowledge…
Contact-Implicit Optimization of Locomotion Trajectories for a Quadrupedal Microrobot
Neel Doshi, Kaushik Jayaram, Benjamin Goldberg +3
Planning locomotion trajectories for legged microrobots is challenging because of their complex morphology, high frequency passive dynamics, and discontinuous contact interactions…
Effective Locomotion at Multiple Stride Frequencies Using Proprioceptive Feedback on a Legged Microrobot
Neel Doshi, Kaushik Jayaram, Samantha Castellanos +2
Limitations in actuation, sensing, and computation have forced small legged robots to rely on carefully tuned, mechanically mediated leg trajectories for effective locomotion. Rece…