Latest Papers

ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics

  • A Small-Scale Integrated Jumping-Crawling Robot: Design, Modeling, and Demonstration
    on June 16, 2025 at 12:00 am

    AbstractThe small jumping-crawling robot improves its obstacle-crossing ability by selecting appropriate locomotion methods. However, current research on jumping-crawling robots remains focused on enhancing specific aspects of performance, and several issues still exist, including nonadjustable gaits, poor stability, nonadjustable jumping posture, and poor motion continuity. This article presents a small jumping-crawling robot with decoupled jumping and crawling mechanisms, offline adjustable gaits, autonomous self-righting, autonomous steering, and certain slope-climbing abilities. The crawling mechanism adopts a partially adjustable Klann six-bar linkage, which can generate four stride lengths and three gaits. The jumping mechanism is designed as a six-bar linkage with passive compliance, and an active clutch allows energy storage and release in any state. The autonomous self-righting mechanism enables the robot to self-right after tipping over, meanwhile providing support, steering, and posture adjustment functions. Prototype experiments show that the designed robot demonstrates good motion stability and can climb a 45 deg slope without tipping over. The robot shows excellent steering performance, with a single action taking 5 s and achieving a steering angle of 11.5 deg. It also exhibits good motion continuity, with an average recovery time of 12 s to return to crawling mode after a jump. Crawling experiments on rough terrain demonstrate the feasibility of applying the designed robot in real-world scenarios.

Rigid-Foldable Mechanism Inspired by Origami Twisted Tower

Abstract

Rigid origami mechanisms have great practical utility in different fields. This paper presents a rigid and foldable mechanism based on the origami artwork Twisted Tower. The mathematical model of the funnel-shaped tower cell was developed for the first time, which accurately describes its kinematic behavior. Based on this model, criteria for the appropriate geometry of the tower components are proposed to prevent internal interference in the tower mechanism during the twisting movement. In this paper, two geometric design cases of twisted tower mechanisms, including a normal-shaped tower and a heteromorphic tower, are presented. Several additional modifications were also imposed to adapt the proposed mechanism to generalized and standardized manufacturing and assembly. Experimental results illustrate that the kinematic characteristics of the fabricated mechanism meet its designed performance. Furthermore, the proposed mechanism is suitable for applications such as continuum manipulators, which exhibit much better resistance to external loads than their flexible-rigid hybrid counterparts.

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