About

Tensegrities are relatively simple mechanical systems, consisting of a number of rigid elements (struts) joined at their endpoints by tensile elements (cables or springs), and kept stable through a synergistic interplay of pre-stress forces. Beyond engineering, properties of tensegrity have been demonstrated at all scales of the natural world, ranging from the tendinous network of the human hand to the mechanotransduction of living cell. At every scale, tensegrity structures have an impressive strength-to-weight ratio, are structurally robust, and stable in the face of deformation. Moreover, tensegrity structures are inherently modular (consisting of only struts and springs). This means that increasingly complex tensegrity structures can be constructed simply by increasing the number of struts and springs. They are simple enough to be baby toys and complex enough to serve as the basis for the next generation of NASA’s planetary rovers. Tensegrity structures are therefore a compelling and versatile platform with which to explore a wide range of topics and applications, including biomimetics, bio-inspired Robots soft material robotics, cellular and modular robots, compliant joint/mechanism, distributed robot systems, and tendon/wire mechanism (to name just a few).

The goal of this website is to provide a showcase for tensegrity researchers and to serve as a collective hub for the tensegrity robotics community, and an archive of tensegrity robotics papers. If you’re a tensegrity robotics researcher please help us curate this site!

Main Contributors

Contributing

This website is maintained by the research community. If you wish to add or change something on the website, please feel free to create a pull request that implements the changes. The sources of the website are available here.