Locomotion on flowing granular ground is unlike locomotion on hard ground because feet and/or wheels experience both solid- and fluid-like forces during surface penetration. This is the essence of why navigating over granular material is a challenging undertaking for most all manmade vehicles. Places such as sandy beaches or snow covered mountain tops typically present very hard, if not unmanageable, obstacles to vehicles of all types. Yet, these same challenging environments are places teeming with animals that have developed effective navigation techniques. Studying such biological models and conducting systematic experiments with robotic models on controlled granular media our group aims to 1) build a concrete understanding of the dynamics of granular material; and 2) design a legged robotic system that can demonstrate high locomotion performance on granular media.
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