Recent research on mobile robots has focused on increasing their adaptability to unpredictable and unstructured environments using soft materials and structures. However, the determination of key design parameters and control over these compliant robots are predominantly iterated through experiments, lacking a solid theoretical foundation. To improve their efficiency, this paper aims to provide mathematics modeling over two locomotion, crawling and swimming. Specifically, a dynamic model is first devised to reveal the influence of the contact surfaces' frictional coefficients on displacements in different motion phases. Besides, a swimming kinematics model is provided using coordinate transformation, based on which, we further develop an algorithm that systematically plans human-like swimming gaits, with maximum thrust obtained. The proposed algorithm is highly generalizable and has the potential to be applied in other soft robots with multiple joints. Simulation experiments have been conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed modeling.

However, the rigid computer chips traditionally needed to enable advanced robot capabilities -- sensing, analyzing and responding to the environment -- add extra weight to the thin sheet materials and makes them harder to fold. The semiconductor-based components therefore have to be added after a robot has taken its final shape. Now, a multidisciplinary team led by researchers at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering has created a new fabrication technique for fully foldable robots that can perform a variety of complex tasks without relying on semiconductors. A study detailing the research findings was published in Nature Communications. By embedding flexible and electrically conductive materials into a pre-cut, thin polyester film sheet, the researchers created a system of information-processing units, or transistors, which can be integrated with sensors and actuators.

It may sound like the plot of'Fantastic Voyage', but miniature robots that can travel around the human body and dispense medicines could soon be a reality. Researchers at Stanford University have developed a'millirobot' that can roll, flip, spin, and even swim to enter narrow spaces. The fingertip-sized machine is inspired by the Japanese paper-folding art of origami and can be controlled using magnets – carrying drug treatments directly to a tumour, blood clot, infection or pain point. The millirobot could revolutionise medicine, according to the researchers, replacing pills or intravenous injections that can cause unwanted side effects. In the 1966 sci-fi classic Fantastic Voyage, a submarine and its crew are shrunk and injected into a dying patient, where they venture through his veins into his brain and destroy a blockage using laser guns.

A group of EPFL researchers have developed a foldable device that can fit in a pocket and can transmit touch stimuli when used in a human-machine interface. When browsing an e-commerce site on your smartphone, or a music streaming service on your laptop, you can see pictures and hear sound snippets of what you are going to buy. But sometimes it would be great to touch it too – for example to feel the texture of a garment, or the stiffness of a material. The problem is that there are no miniaturized devices that can render touch sensations the way screens and loudspeakers render sight and sound, and that can easily be coupled to a computer or a mobile device. Researchers in Professor Jamie Paik's lab at EPFL have made a step towards creating just that – a foldable device that can fit in a pocket and can transmit touch stimuli when used in a human-machine interface.

Origami robots can be formed by tightly integrating multiple functions of actuation, sensing and communication. But the task is challenging as conventional materials including plastics and paper used for such robotic designs impose constraints to limit add-on functionalities. To install multifunctionalities to the system scientists must typically include external electronics that increase the weight of the robot. In a recent study now published on Science Robotics, Haitao Yang and colleagues at the interdisciplinary departments of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering in the U.S. and Singapore developed a graphene oxide (GO)-enabled templating synthesis process to produce reconfigurable, compliant and multifunctional metallic backbones. The backbones formed the basis for origami robots coupled with built-in strain sensing and wireless communication capabilities.

MIT CSAIL's origami robot is packaged in an ingestible ice pill. In 2013, University of Sheffield roboticist Dana Damian was doing postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School affiliate Boston Children's Hospital when she learned of a procedure called the Foker technique. The surgery, performed on children with a rare congenital lung defect, calls for doctors to attach sutures to part of an infant's esophagus, then tie them off on the baby's back. Over time, the sutures lengthen the esophagus by pulling on it, stimulating tissue growth. Although the technique can be effective, the risk of infection and complication is high, and the baby must remain under sedation for weeks.

Daniela Rus is a robot evangelist. She challenged a packed audience in the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex on Tuesday to imagine a world where robots free us to be more creative by taking care of all our physical tasks--from playing with our pets to performing surgery without an incision. As director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Rus delivered the inaugural lecture in Northeastern's Distinguished Speaker Series in Robots. "Imagine a world where you're being driven home by your autonomous car," said Rus. "Your car is connected to your refrigerator, which tells it what ingredients you need for dinner. The car is also connected to the grocery store, which is run by robots that fill your bags so they are ready when you drive up. Then you bring the food home to the robot cook and you happily let your children help in the kitchen even though they make a mess, because the mess will be taken care of by the cleaning robot."

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Two Cassies give you a tour of Agility Robotics, where they mostly don't believe in furniture: Final assembly can be done in just over a minute and a half, as long as you're willing to be sped up a little bit: Speaking of Cassies (and we do like speaking of Cassies), Michigan Robotics just got theirs (No. 001!) and we're expecting GREAT THINGS: My question now is whether all the robots are going to be called "Cassie," or whether each will (eventually) be renamed when it arrives at its destination. My other question now is whether the first Cassie was "000" or "001," and also why don't they think they'll be making more than a thousand Cassies, because that seems pessimistic.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. We've written about extra robot arms for humans in the past, but these are more complicated and perhaps capable than most: I'm not completely sold on the control system here, since it essentially means you're trading the use of your legs for the use of some extra arms. If this isn't enough reason to get a RoboThespian, I don't know what is: ROBOTIS was running this demo at ICRA as well; the first TurtleBot is using its laser for person-detection and following, while the other TurtleBots are wirelessly following the first.

The fields of modular and origami robotics have become increasingly popular in recent years, with both approaches presenting particular benefits, as well as limitations, to the end user. Christoph Belke and Jamie Paik from RRL, EPFL and NCCR Robotics have recently proposed an elegant new solution that integrates both types of robotics in order to overcome their individual limitations: Mori, a modular origami robot. Mori is the first example of a robot that combines the concepts behind both origami robots and reconfigurable, modular robots. Origami robotics utilises folding of thin structures to produce single robots that can change their shape, while modular robotics uses large numbers of individual entities to reconfigure the overall shape and address diverse tasks. Origami robots are compact and light-weight but have functional restrictions related to the size and shape of the sheet and how many folds can be created.