robot design engineers

Abstract: Robotic systems for environmental monitoring and ecological surveying in wetlands and swamps must operate across diverse terrestrial and aquatic conditions. Conventional fixed-geometry wheels cannot adapt their contact geometry to these varying conditions. This work presents MOSS (Multimodal Origami Swamp Robot System), a compact amphibious robotic platform with 3D-printed origami wheels. The compact crank mechanism switches the wheel between contracted and expanded configurations, changing its width, body diameter, and fin orientation simultaneously. The contracted configuration is better suited to efficient rolling on firmer ground, whereas the expanded configuration provides greater contact and terrain engagement on softer surfaces. MOSS was evaluated on soil, sand, mud with varying water content, and water, in addition to in-motion morphing and terrestrial-aquatic transition tests. The more energy-efficient wheel configuration depended on terrain. The contracted configuration achieved a lower cost of transport on firmer soil and mud, whereas the expanded configuration performed better on wetter mud, sand, and water, reducing the cost of transport by up to 29%. Expanded wheels also reduced slip in wet mud and reduced both slip and hub sinkage in sand. MOSS successfully completed configuration changes in $1.95 \pm 0.11$ s and demonstrated continuous locomotion across soil-mud-water transitions. Outdoor trials further demonstrated operation across natural deformable terrain and water. These results show that adaptive wheel geometry provides terrain-dependent locomotion benefits and enables a single compact platform to traverse substantially different terrestrial and aquatic conditions.

Abstract: The honeybee waggle dance motivates a communication mechanism in which one agent's movement conveys spatial information that guides other agents' actions. This paper presents a MuJoCo system that extends the point-to-point motion communication setting of MoCom to one performer and multiple observers. A performer broadcasts a six-bit navigation payload using four flight primitives and explicit null signals. Each of one to five observers processes its own onboard RGB images, extracts optical-flow trajectories, recognizes symbols, parses the message, and starts navigation only after confirming its own complete frame. Reception states and execution triggers are separate across observers, while simulation control and safety checks use shared ground truth. With stationary observers, 25 Hz image input, and ideal state-feedback control, a fixed standard suite yielded 44 correct complete messages from 53 receiver exposures across 17 nominal broadcasts; 13 broadcasts passed all group-level decoding and execution checks. Three additional no-message or input-fault controls met their expected outcomes. A separately reported supplemental suite, using the same frozen code at the default geometry, achieved 14 successful receiver exposures across three broadcasts. Near-range and wide-angle configurations exposed tracking and recognition failures, while unsuccessful receivers remained stationary. These finite simulation results support the feasibility of a waggle-dance-inspired broadcast-to-action mechanism under the tested conditions and identify the present perceptual and protocol limits.