About this Research Topic
Biological entities often utilize their body or joint compliances to mechanically adapt to their environments during locomotion or to locomote in a more efficient, faster, or more agile manner. With this Research Topic, we would like to highlight robots that work in a similar manner; robots that exploit compliant body or joint compliance for a better locomotion performance. This can include robots with locomotion capabilities on land, in air, or in water, as well as bio-inspired soft robotic components for locomotion purposes such as tactile, force sensors, or soft artificial muscles. Involvement of control methods that allow the robot to exploit its body compliance is also an important problem to tackle in a path towards bio-inspired soft robots capable of better locomotion.
The topics welcome in this Research Topic include but are not limited to:
• Soft mechanisms for robot locomotion
• Bio-inspired, legged, soft/hybrid robots
• Bio-inspired, crawling, soft/hybrid robots
• Bio-inspired, swimming, soft/hybrid robots
• Bio-inspired, aerial, soft/hybrid robots
• Bio-inspired control strategies for soft/hybrid robots locomotion
• Bio-inspired actuation strategies / actuators for soft/hybrid robots locomotion
• Bio-inspired sensing strategies / sensors for soft/hybrid robots locomotion
• Locomotion strategies for bio-inspired soft/hybrid robots
• Locomotion capabilities and limitations of bio-inspired soft/hybrid robots
• Embodied intelligence in soft/compliant locomotion
• Adaptive morphology in soft/compliant locomotion
• Energy efficient soft/compliant locomotion
• Learning of soft/compliant locomotion behaviors
• Evolving soft/compliant locomotion
Keywords: bio-inspired robots, soft robots, robot locomotion, legged robots, crawling robots, flapping-wing robots, swimming robots, soft mechanisms
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.