Morphing MILR: Design and control of a cable-driven limbless robot with rolling joints for maneuvering in complex environments
Researchers present Morphing MILR, a cable-driven limbless robot with rolling joints that can reconfigure its body morphology and compliance to achieve multiple locomotion modes such as lateral undulation, sidewinding, rolling, and twisting. The robot uses distributed cable actuation and programmable passive compliance for robust locomotion without complex sensing. Applications include search and rescue, environmental monitoring, and inspection.
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[Submitted on 22 Jul 2026]
Title:Morphing MILR: Design and control of a cable-driven limbless robot with rolling joints for maneuvering in complex environments
View a PDF of the paper titled Morphing MILR: Design and control of a cable-driven limbless robot with rolling joints for maneuvering in complex environments, by Donoven Dortilus and 4 other authors
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Abstract:Limbless robots offer exceptional mobility in confined and cluttered environments due to their slender bodies and their ability to exploit body-terrain interactions. Recent designs incorporating compliance demonstrate robust locomotion without complex sensing or control; however, these systems typically rely on fixed body configurations, with each morphology specialized for a single locomotion mode or environment. This raises a key challenge: how can a single limbless robot achieve versatile locomotion while preserving the robustness of compliance-mediated locomotion? To address this challenge, we present a cable-driven limbless robot that reconfigures body morphology and compliance to enable diverse locomotion modes. Distributed cable actuation generates traveling body waves, while programmable passive compliance enables robust contact-rich locomotion without terrain knowledge or high-bandwidth feedback. Rolling joints reorient bending planes along the body, enabling rapid reconfiguration and smooth transitions between locomotion styles, and incorporate geared locking to maintain configuration without continuous power. By combining programmable bending compliance and morphology control, the platform achieves lateral undulation, sidewinding, rolling, and twisting within a single system. Experiments demonstrate reliable gait generation, traversal in obstacle-rich environments, and transitions between modes, establishing a versatile limbless platform for navigating complex environments with applications in search and rescue, environmental monitoring, and inspection.
Subjects:
Robotics (cs.RO)
Cite as: arXiv:2607.19714 [cs.RO]
(or arXiv:2607.19714v1 [cs.RO] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.19714
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
Submission history
From: Tianyu Wang [view email] [v1] Wed, 22 Jul 2026 03:29:39 UTC (2,220 KB)
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