We present CurveQuad, a miniature curved origami quadruped that is able to self-fold and unfold, crawl, and steer, all using a single actuator. CurveQuad is designed for planar manufacturing, with parts that attach and stack sequentially on a flat body. The design uses 4 curved creases pulled by 2 pairs of tendons from opposite ends of a link on a 270°servo. It is 8 cm in the longest direction and weighs 10.9 g. Rotating the horn pulls the tendons inwards to induce folding. Continuing to rotate the horn shears the robot, enabling the robot to shuffle forward while turning in either direction. We experimentally validate the robot's ability to fold, steer, and unfold by changing the magnitude of horn rotation. We also demonstrate basic feedback control by steering towards a light source from a variety of starting positions and orientations, and swarm aggregation by having 4 robots simultaneously steer towards the light. The results demonstrate the potential of using curved crease origami in self-assembling and deployable robots with complex motions such as locomotion.

Jumping motion is an effective way to overcome large obstacles, especially for the miniature robots. However, controlling of the jumping trajectory on a centimeter scale robot is not easy due to the limitation of size and payload. None of the jumping robots lighter than 90 g achieved the feedback control of their jumping height and take-off angle independently. In this work, we proposed a miniature 6 g jumping robot that ensured the feedback control of jumping trajectory. Two simple PD controllers were used in take-off angle and jumping height control, respectively. The robot can control its jumping height from 0 to 73cm, take-off angle from −20° to +20° with respect to the vertical direction. The control errors of the jumping height and the take-off angle were less than 5 cm and 2°, respectively. The robot can hop upon different obstacles exactly, greatly increased the controllability of the micro jumping robot.