Intelligent Rock-Climbing Robot Capable of Multimodal Locomotion and Hybrid Bioinspired Attachment.

Rock-climbing robots have significant potential in fieldwork and planetary exploration. However, they currently face limitations such as a lack of stability and adaptability on extreme terrains, slow locomotion, and single functionality. This study introduces a novel multimodal and adaptive rock-climbing robot (MARCBot), which addresses these limitations through spiny grippers that draw inspiration from morpho-functionalities observed in beetles, arboreal birds, and hoofed animals.

Toward Support-free 3D Printing: A Skeletal Approach for Partitioning Models.

Minimizing support structures is crucial in reducing 3D printing material and time. Partition-based methods are efficient means in realizing this objective. Although some algorithms exist for support-free fabrication of solid models, no algorithm ever considers the problem of support-free fabrication for shell models (i.