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Welcome
Welcome
Animals -- lizards, snakes, insects -- often exhibit novel strategies in effectively interacting with their physical environments and generating desired responses for locomotion. In our lab, we are interested in creating robots that can do the same.
Our approach integrates engineering, physics, and biology to discover the general principles governing the interactions between bio-inspired robots and their locomotion environments. For example, how do legged animals and robots use solid-like and fluid-like responses from soft sand and mud to produce effective movement? How can insect-like and snake-like robots take advantage of obstacle collisions to navigate within cluttered environments?
We use these principles to create novel sensing and control strategies that can allow robots to perceive and intelligently elicit environment responses to achieve desired motion, even from traditional-considered "undesired" environments such as flowing sand, yielding mud, and cluttered obstacle fields.
News
News
2025/7/20: We are now on Instagram! Follow us at @uscroboland to stay connected with our latest research, outreach, and expeditions!
2025/6/24: RoboLAND at Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS):
Dr. Feifei Qian gave an invited talk at the Space Robotics workshop -- "Towards Terrain-aware, High-mobility Robots for Planetary Explorations"
Shipeng Liu (PhD student) presented his paper at RSS -- "Adaptive Locomotion on Mud through Proprioceptive Sensing of Substrate Properties"
Matthew Jiang (UG student) presented his work at the Multi-objective optimization workshop - "Safe Active Navigation and Exploration for Planetary Environments Using Proprioceptive Measurements"
Our lab, RoboLAND, also presented a lab tour and a live robot demo at RSS!
2024/11/1: Project LASSIE-M (Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments - Improving Mars Exploration) received $1.4-million technology development funds from NASA's Mars Exploration Program (MEP)! Looking forward to more exciting science and technology development!
2024/6/17: Team LASSIE (Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments) successfully completed the 2nd field testing at Mt Hood, OR! Check out media coverage by Northwest Public Broadcasting: "How a dog-like robot is training for space exploration on Mount Hood"
2024/4/3: Our LASSIE (Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments) project was featured by CBS News - Los Angeles, BBC, CBC, Reuters, IEEE Spectrum, Wired (Spanish version), and NPR Weekend Edition!
2024/3/14: Team LASSIE performed a successful robot demo at the 2024 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), demonstrating our robots' capability to sense regolith forces from their legs during walking, and use the sensed forces to infer geotechnical properties of the regolith!
2023/11/1: Our TRUSSES (Temporarily, Robots Unite to Surmount Sandy Entrapments, Then Separate) project, in collaboration with UPenn, received a $2 million grant from NASA, to develop a multi-robot system that can collectively traverse extreme planetary surfaces!
2023/9/12: Congratulations to RoboLAND undergrad researcher, Ethan Fulcher, for receiving the 2023 Provost's Research Fellowship!
2023/8/12: Team LASSIE (Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments) successfully completed the 1st field testing at Mt Hood, OR!
2023/6/24: John Bush (RoboLAND undergrad)'s presentation “Robotic Legs as Novel Planetary Instrumentation to Explore the Mechanical Properties of Regolith" was selected to receive the Honorable Mention for the Stephen E. Dwornik Planetary Geoscience Undergraduate Poster Presentation Award at the 54th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Congratulations John!
2023/5/10: Prof. Qian received the NSF CAREER award, titled "CAREER: Utilizing Physical Interactions to Improve Legged Mobility on Challenging Terrains". This work seeks to develop methods that can enable robots to actively "harvest" environment interaction forces to produce agile movements in natural, complex environments.
2023/3/13: Team LASSIE (Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments) completed the 1st field testing at White Sands, NM!
2022/8/1: Project LASSIE (Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments) led by Prof. Qian is awarded $3-million grant from NASA!
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