Robots for Environment
Bio-integrated Robotics Lab
Robots for Environment
기후위기의 시대, 자연환경과 도시·인프라를 고 시공간 해상도(high spatio-temporal resolution)로 관측하는 능력은 과학·정책·산업의 의사결정을 지탱하며 대응의 속도와 정확도를 좌우합니다.
그러나 현행 모니터링은 현장 인력과 고정형 센서에 의존해 접근성·안전성·커버리지에 제약이 큽니다. 또한 열대우림·극지·산불 현장, 고층 구조물·교량·풍력 설비, 원전 등 고위험 시설처럼 중요한 지점 다수가 사실상 직접 접근이 곤란합니다. 일반적인 로봇도 제한된 이동 방식과 환경 상호작용의 취약성으로, 복잡하고 변화무쌍한 현장에서 지속 관측이 어렵습니다.
BiRL은 자연에서 영감을 받은 생체모사(bio-inspired) 유연 센서·구동을 바탕으로, 다양한 지형에 순응해 안전하게 접촉하며 접근이 어려운 극한 현장에서도 자율적으로 적응·관측하는 로봇 플랫폼을 연구합니다. 또한 데이터와 AI를 결합한 관측–판단–대응 루프를 통합해, 열대우림 조사, 도시 열섬·대기질 모니터링, 교량·풍력 설비 상태 진단, 산불·홍수 등 재난 현장 정찰까지 로봇 기반 환경 모니터링을 확장합니다. 이러한 접근을 통해 인간과 자연이 협력하는 공생적(Symbiotic) bio-integration을 실현하는 로봇 기술을 개발합니다.
In the era of climate crisis, the ability to observe natural ecosystems, cities, and infrastructure at high spatio-temporal resolution underpins decision-making across science, policy, and industry, and it determines the speed and accuracy of our response.
However, monitoring that relies on field personnel and fixed sensors faces major constraints in accessibility, safety, and coverage. Many critical sites—rainforests, polar regions, wildfire scenes; high-rise structures, bridges, wind turbines; and high-risk facilities such as nuclear plants—are effectively off-limits to direct human access. Conventional robots, with limited mobility and fragile environmental interaction, also struggle to sustain observation in complex, rapidly changing conditions.
BiRL develops robot platforms that combine bio-inspired, compliant sensing and actuation to autonomously adapt to diverse terrain and observe even in hard-to-access, extreme environments. We also integrate data and AI into an automated observe–decide–respond loop, extending robot-based environmental monitoring from rainforest surveys and urban heat-island/air-quality monitoring to structural-health assessment of bridges and wind turbines, and real-time reconnaissance during wildfires and floods. Through this approach, BiRL advances robot technologies that realize symbiotic bio-integration—humans and nature working together to confront the climate crisis.
Related work 1
M. Heinrich, S. Song et al., Hygroscopically-driven transient actuator for environmental sensor deployment.
2023 IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft), 1–8 (2023)
Autonomous sensor deployment in unstructured natural forests utilizing aerial vehicles is a promising alternative to manual sensor placement by humans, yet retrieval of deployed sensors still remains a challenge. A biodegradable deployment system is therefore crucial to avoid any harmful e-waste in the target environment. However, challenges arise in the choice of materials, design and manufacturing methods to develop such transient, lightweight grippers with an appropriate response time, high deformation, and versatility for diverse shapes of tree branches for sensor deployment. In this work, we propose a hygroscopically actuated, lightweight and biodegradable gripper as a practical solution for the above challenge. Our gripper utilizes dehydration of a bio-polymer to achieve sufficient deformation requiring up to 3 W to coil around a tree branch with multiple turns. The design achieves a gripping force of up to 1.3 N, which is sufficient to deploy lightweight environmental sensors on a tree. The gripper can also exhibit fast actuation capability to complete a coiling turn in less than 120 s, which enables a typical aerial vehicle to deploy tens of sensors in a single charging cycle. Furthermore, this work presents a proof-of-concept of the proposed hygroscopic gripper demonstrating the potential of aerial sensor deployment for future forest monitoring tasks. Such systems could be used to collect data with high spatial and temporal resolution while ensuring low pollution of the environment.
Related work 2
S. Song, S. Joshi, J. Paik, CMOS-Inspired Complementary Fluidic Circuits for Soft Robots. Advanced Science 8, 2100924 (2021).
The latest efforts in digital fluidic circuits’ research aim at being electronics-free, light-weight, and compliant controllers for soft robots; however, challenges arise to adjust the fluidic circuit's digital logic operations. Currently, there is no other way to modulate the amplitude or frequency but to structurally redesign the entire fluidic circuitry. This is mainly because there is currently no method to create an analog circuit-like behavior in the digital fluidic circuits using conventional digitized fluidic gates. In this work, a new approach is presented to designing a circuit with digitized fluidic gates that is comparable to an analog circuit capable of actively tuning the circuit's fluidic characteristics, such as pressure gain, amplitude of output, and time response. For the first time, a pressure-controlled oscillator is modeled, designed, and prototyped that not only controls the fluidic oscillation but also modulates its frequency using only a single, quasi-static pressure input. It can also demonstrate the circuit's performance for the control of a soft robotic system by actively modulating the motion of a soft earthworm robot up to twice of crawling speeds. This work has distinct contributions to designing and building intelligent pneumatic controllers toward truly comprehensive soft robotic systems.