Multi-environment robotic transitions through adaptive morphogenesis.

The current proliferation of mobile robots spans ecological monitoring, warehouse management and extreme environment exploration, to an individual consumer's home. This expanding frontier of applications requires robots to transit multiple environments, a substantial challenge that traditional robot design strategies have not effectively addressed. For example, biomimetic design-copying an animal's morphology, propulsion mechanism and gait-constitutes one approach, but it loses the benefits of engineered materials and mechanisms that can be exploited to surpass animal performance.