Vytas SunSpiral’s Publications

Full CV for Vytas SunSpiral is available for Download.
(Note: Prior to marriage in 2005, published as Thomas Willeke)

NATIONAL ROADMAPS AND REPORTS

Contributing Author of the Space Robotics Chapter of the 2013 Roadmap for US Robotics. 

Vytas SunSpiral, Adrian Agogino, and David Atkinson. “Super Ball Bot – Structures for Planetary Landing and Exploration.” NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, Phase 2, Final Report, Sept 2015. Download PDF.

Adrian Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, and David Atkinson. “Super Ball Bot – Structures for Planetary Landing and Exploration.” NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, Phase 1, Final Report, July 2013. Download PDF.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

[10] Jennifer C. Case, James Gibert, Joran Booth, Vytas SunSpiral, and Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, “Spinal Helical Actuation Patterns for Locomotion in Soft Robots,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters Journal, Vol 5, No. 3, July 2020. Download PDF .

[9] Jennifer C. Case, Edward L. White, Vytas SunSpiral, Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, “Reducing Actuator Requirements in Continuum Robots through Optimized Cable Routing”, Journal of Soft Robotics, October 2017. Download PDF ..
Supplemental Data.

[8] Nick Cheney, Josh Bongard, Vytas SunSpiral, Hod Lipson, “Scalable Co-Optimization of Morphology and Control in Embodied Machines”, The Journal of the Royal Society Interface, June 2018 Journal Link. Download PDF.

[7] Lee-Huang Chen, Kyunam Kim, Ellande Tang, Kevin Li, Richard House, Edward Liu Zhu, Kimberley Fountain, Alice M. Agogino, Adrian Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, Erik Jung, “Soft Spherical Tensegrity Robot Design Using Rod-Centered Actuation and Control”, ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, Vol.9, April, 2017. DOI: 10.1115/1.4036014 Download PDF.

[6] Brian T. Mirletz, Perry Bhandal, Ryan D. Adams, Adrian K. Agogino, Roger D. Quinn, Vytas SunSpiral, “Goal-Directed CPG-Based Control for Tensegrity Spines with Many Degrees of Freedom Traversing Irregular Terrain”, Journal of Soft Robotics, Vol. 2, No. 4, December 2015: 165-176. doi:10.1089/soro.2015.0012. Download PDF ..

[5] Barry Trimmer, Vytas SunSpiral,  “An Interview with NASA Principal Investigator Vytas SunSpiral: Expert Opinion on the Advantages and Limitations of Soft Robotics”, Journal of Soft Robotics,  Vol. 2, No. 2, 2015, pp: 51-58, Download PDF ..

[4] Atil Iscen, Ken Caluwaerts, Jonathan Bruce, Adrian Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, Kagan Tumer, “Learning Tensegrity Locomotion using Open-Loop Control Signals and Coevolutionary Algorithms,” Artificial Life Journal, Vol. 21, No 2. pp 119-140, May 2015; doi:10.1162/ARTL_a_00163 Download PDF.

[3] Ken Caluwaerts, Jérémie Despraz, Atil Iscen, Andrew P. Sabelhaus, Jonathan Bruce, Benjamin Schrauwen, and Vytas SunSpiral, “Design and Control of Compliant Tensegrity Robots through Simulation and Hardware Validation,” Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Vol. 11, No 98. September 6, 2014; doi:10.1098/rsif.2014.0520 1742-5662 Download PDF.
BibTex

[2] Vytas SunSpiral, DW Wheeler, Daniel Chavez-Clemente, David Mittman, “Development and Field Testing of the FootFall Planning System for the ATHLETE Robots,” The Journal of Field Robotics, Vol. 29: pp 483-505. 2012. Download PDF.

[1] Clayton Kunz, Thomas Willeke, Illah Nourbakhsh. “Automatic Mapping of Dynamic Office Environments.” Autonomous Robots Journal. Editor George A. Bekey. Kluwe Academic Publishers, Vol. 7, No. 2, September 1999. Download PDF.

CONFERENCE PAPERS

[51] Jeffrey Michael Friesen, John Dean, Thomas Bewley, Vytas SunSpiral, “A Tensegrity-Inspired Compliant 3-DOF Compliant Joint”, In Proceedings of 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA18), Brisbane, Australia, May 2018. Download PDF.

[50] Erik Jung, Victoria Ly, Nicholas Cessna, Mai Linh Ngo, Dennis Castro, Vytas SunSpiral, Mircea Teodorescu, “Bio-inspired Tensegrity Flexural Joints”, In Proceedings of 2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA18), Brisbane, Australia, May 2018. Download PDF.

[49] Dawn Hustig-Schultz, Vytas SunSpiral, Mircea Teodorescu, “Morphological Optimization for Tensegrity Quadruped Locomotion,” in Proceedings of 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS2017), Vancouver, Canada, Sept. 2017. Download PDF.

[48] Andrew P. Sabelhaus, Shirley Huajing Zhao, Mallory C. Daly, Ellande Tang, Edward Zhu, Abishek K. Akella, Zeerek A. Ahmad, Vytas SunSpiral, Alice M. Agogino, “Trajectory Tracking Control of a Flexible Spine Robot, With and Without a Reference Input”, In Proceedings of 2017 NASA/ESA Conference on Adaptive Hardware and Systems – Workshop on Structurally Adaptive Tensegrity Robots, Pasadena, CA, July 2017. Download PDF.

[47] Andrew P. Sabelhaus, Abishek K. Akella, Zeerek A. Ahmad, Vytas SunSpiral, “Model-Predictive Control of a Flexible Spine Robot”, in Proceedings of the 2017 American Control Conference (ACC), Seattle, WA, May 2017. Download PDF.

[46] Xinyang Geng, Marvin Zhang, Jonathan Bruce, Ken Caluwaerts, Massimo Vespignani, Vytas SunSpiral, Pieter Abbeel, Sergey Levine, “Deep Reinforcement Learning for Tensegrity Robot Locomotion”, in Proceedings of 2017 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA17), Singapore, May 2017. Pre-print available on arXiv.
Project Website, Code & Video.

[45] Xinyang Geng, Marvin Zhang, Jonathan Bruce, Ken Caluwaerts, Massimo Vespignani, Vytas SunSpiral, Pieter Abbeel, Sergey Levine, “Deep Reinforcement Learning for Tensegrity Robot Locomotion”, presented at Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2016) Deep Reinforcement Learning Workshop, Barcelona, Spain, Dec 2016.

[44] Kyunam Kim, Lee-Huang Chen, Brian Cera, Mallory Daly, Edward Zhu, Julien Despois, Vincent Viola, Adrian K. Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, and Alice M. Agogino, “Hopping & Rolling Locomotion with Spherical Tensegrity Robots”, In the Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Korea, October 2016. Download PDF.

[43] Steven Lessard, Dennis Castro, William Asper, Shaurya Deep Chopra, Leya Breanna Baltaxe-Admony, Mircea Teodorescu, Vytas SunSpiral, and Adrian Agogino, “A Bio-Inspired Tensegrity Manipulator with Multi-DOF, Structurally Compliant Joints”, In the Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Korea, October 2016. Download PDF.

[42] Dawn Hustig-Schultz, Vytas SunSpiral, and Mircea Teodorescu, “Morphological Design for Controlled Tensegrity Quadruped Locomotion”, In the Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), Korea, October 2016. Download PDF.

[41] Leya Breanna Baltaxe-Admony, Ash S. Robbins, Erik A. Jung, Steven Lessard, Mircea Teodorescu, Vytas SunSpiral, Adrian Agogino, “Simulating the Human Shoulder through Active Tensegrity Structures” In Proceedings of ASME 2016 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE 2016), August 21-August 24, 2016, Charlotte, NC, USA. Download PDF.

[40] Lee-Huang Chen, Kyunam Kim, Ellande Tang, Kevin Li, Richard House, Erik Jung, Alice M. Agogino, Adrian Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, “Soft Spherical Tensegrity Robot Design Using Rod-Centered Actuation and Control” In Proceedings of ASME 2016 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE 2016), August 21-August 24, 2016, Charlotte, NC, USA. Download PDF.

[39] Shaurya Chopra, Mircea Teodorescu, Steven Lessard, Adrian Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral “Tensegrity Heat Shield For Atmospheric Entry Through Celestial Bodies” In Proceedings of ASME 2016 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE 2016), August 21-August 24, 2016, Charlotte, NC, USA. Download PDF.

[38] Nick Cheney, Josh Bongard, Vytas SunSpiral and Hod Lipson, “On the Difficulty of Co-Optimizing Morphology and Control in Evolved Virtual Creatures”, In The Proceedings of The 15th International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems (ALife), Mexico, July 2016. Download PDF.

[37] Zakary Littlefield, Ken Caluwaerts, Jonathan Bruce, Vytas SunSpiral, Kostas E. Bekris, “Integrating Simulated Tensegrity Models with Efficient Motion Planning for Planetary Navigation”, In Proceedings of The International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (i-SAIRAS 2016), June 2016, Beijing, P.R.China. Download PDF.

[36] Michael Fanton, Paul Glick, Jonathan Bruce, Ken Caluwaerts, Jeffrey Michael Friesen, Vytas SunSpiral, “Robust And Efficient Multistage Braking System For Cable Driven Robots”, In Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (ISAIRAS-16), June 2016, Beijing, P.R. China. Download PDF.

[35] Ken Caluwaerts, Jeffrey M. Friesen, Jonathan Bruce, and Vytas SunSpiral, “State Estimation for Tensegrity Robots”, In Proceedings of 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, (ICRA2016), May 2016, Stockholm, Sweden. Pre-print available on arXiv.. Download final PDF.

[34] Steven Lessard, Jonathan Bruce, Erik Jung, Mircea Teodorescu, Vytas SunSpiral, “A light-weight, multi-axis compliant tensegrity joint”, In proceedings of 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, (ICRA2016), May 2016, Stockholm, Sweden. Pre-print available on arXiv. Download final PDF.

[33] Jeffrey Michael Friesen, Michael Fanton, Paul Glick, Pavlo Manovi, Alexander Xydes, Thomas Bewley, Vytas SunSpiral, “The Second Generation Prototype of A Duct Climbing Tensegrity Robot, DuCTTv2”, In proceedings of 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, (ICRA2016), May 2016, Stockholm, Sweden. Download PDF.
Video of DuCTT robot climbing a vertical shaft.
Video of DuCTT robot range of motion.

[32] Brian T. Mirletz, In-Won Park, Roger D. Quinn, Vytas SunSpiral, “Towards bridging the reality gap between tensegrity simulation and robotic hardware,” In Proceedings of of The 2015 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2015), Sept 2015, Hamburg, Germany. Download PDF.

[31] Andrew P. Sabelhaus, Hao Ji, Patrick Hylton, Yakshu Madaan, ChanWoo Yang, Alice M. Agogino, Jeffrey Friesen, Vytas SunSpiral, “Mechanism Design and Simulation of the ULTRA SPINE, A Tensegrity Robot.” In Proceedings of The ASME 2015 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE 2015). August 2015, Boston, Massachusetts. Download PDF.

[30] Steven Lessard, Jonathan Bruce, Adrian Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, Mircae Teodorescu, “Robust Monte Carlo Control Policies to Maneuver Tensegrity Robots out of Obstacles,” In Proceedings of Autonomous Robots and Multirobot Systems (ARMS). May 2015, Istanbul, Turkey. Download PDF.

[29] Andrew P. Sabelhaus, Jonathan Bruce, Ken Caluwaerts, Pavlo Manovi, Roya Fallah Firoozi, Sarah Dobi, Alice M. Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, “System Design and Locomotion of SUPERball, an Untethered Tensegrity Robot.” In Proceedings of 2015 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2015), May 2015, Seattle, Washington, USA. Download PDF.

[28] Brian Mirletz, Roger D. Quinn and Vytas SunSpiral, “CPGs for Adaptive Control of Spine-like Tensegrity Structures” In Proceedings of 2015 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2015) Workshop on Central Pattern Generators for Locomotion Control: Pros, Cons & Alternatives, May 2015, Seattle, Washington, USA. Download PDF.

[27] Jonathan Bruce, Ken Caluwaerts, Mircea Teodorescu, Vytas SunSpiral, “Design and Simulation of Compliant Tensegrity Robots for Planetary Exploration.” In Proceedings of 2015 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2015) Workshop on Soft Robotics: Actuation, Integration, and Applications – Blending Research Perspectives., May 2015, Seattle, Washington, USA. Download PDF.

[26] Lee-Huang Chen, Peadar Keegan, Michelle Yuen, Alice M. Agogino, Rebecca K. Kramer, Adrian K. Agogino, and Vytas SunSpiral, “Soft Robots Using Compliant Tensegrity Structures and Soft Sensors”, In Proceedings of 2015 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA2015) Workshop on Soft Robotics: Actuation, Integration, and Applications Blending Research Perspectives., May 2015, Seattle, Washington, USA. Download PDF.

[25] Kyunam Kim, Adrian K. Agogino, Deaho Moon, Laqshya Taneja, Aliakbar Toghyan, Borna Dehghani, Vytas SunSpiral, Alice M. Agogino, “Rapid Prototyping Design and Control of Tensegrity Soft Robot for Locomotion.” In Proceedings of 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO2014), Dec 2014, Bali, Indonesia. Finalist Best Student Paper. Download PDF. BibTex

[24] In-Won Park, Vytas SunSpiral, “Impedance Controlled Twisted String Actuators for Tensegrity Robots,” In Proceedings of the 2014 14th International Conference on Control, Automation and Systems (ICCAS 2014), KINTEX, Korea, October 2014. Download PDF.

[23] Atil Iscen, Adrian Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, Kagan Tumer, “Flop and Roll: Learning Robust Goal-Directed Locomotion for a Tensegrity Robot,” In Proceedings of The 2014 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2014), Chicago, USA, September 2014. Download PDF.

[22] Andrew P. Sabelhaus, Jonathan Bruce, Ken Caluwaerts, Yangxin Chen, Dizhou Lu, Yuejia Liu, Adrian K. Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, Alice M. Agogino, “Hardware Design and Testing of SUPERball, a Modular Tensegrity Robot”, in Proceedings of The 6th World Conference of the International Association for Structural Control and Monitoring (6WCSCM), Barcelona, Spain, July 2014. Download PDF. BibTex

[21] Brian T. Mirletz, In-Won Park, Thomas E. Flemons, Adrian K. Agogino, Roger D. Quinn, and Vytas SunSpiral, “Design and Control of Modular Spine-Like Tensegrity Structures”, in Proceedings of The 6th World Conference of the International Association for Structural Control and Monitoring (6WCSCM), Barcelona, Spain, July 2014. Download PDF. BibTex

[20] Jonathan Bruce, Andrew Sabelhaus, Yangxin Chen, Dizhou Lu, Kyle Morse, Sophie Milam, Ken Caluwaerts, Alice Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, “SUPERball: Exploring Tensegrities for Planetary Probes,” in Proceedings of 12th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space (i-SAIRAS 2014), Montreal, Canada, June 2014. Download PDF.

[19] Jeffrey Michael Friesen, Alexandra Pogue, Thomas Bewley, Mauricio de Oliveira, Robert E. Skelton, Vytas SunSpiral, “A Compliant Tensegrity Robot for Exploring Duct Systems”, In Proceedings of International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Hong Kong, June 2014 Download PDF.

[18] Jonathan Bruce, Ken Caluwaerts, Atil Iscen, Vytas SunSpiral, “Design and Evolution of a Modular Tensegrity Robot Platform”, In Proceedings of International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Hong Kong, June 2014. Download PDF.

[17] Brian Tietz, Ross Carnahan, Richard Bachmann, Roger Quinn, and Vytas SunSpiral, “Tetraspine: Robust Terrain Handling on a Tensegrity Robot Using Central Pattern Generators,” In Proceedings of 2013 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM 2013), Wollongong, Australia, July 2013. Download PDF.

[16] Vytas SunSpiral, George Gorospe, Jonathan Bruce, Atil Iscen, George Korbel, Sophie Milam, Adrian Agogino, David Atkinson, “Tensegrity Based Probes for Planetary Exploration: Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) and Surface Mobility Analysis,” in Proceedings of 10th International Planetary Probe Workshop, San Jose, California, June 2013. Download PDF. BibTex

[15] Atil Iscen, Adrian Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, and Kagan Tumer.  “Robust Distributed Control of Rolling Tensegrity Robot.” In proceedings of Autonomous Robots and Multi-robot Systems (ARMS)  Workshop, Saint Paul, Minnesota,  May, 2013. Download PDF. BibTex

[14] Atil Iscen, Adrian Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, and Kagan Tumer. “Controlling Tensegrity Robots through Evolution.”  In proceedings of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, (GECCO 2013), Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 6-10, 2013. Download PDF. BibTex

[13] Atil Iscen, Adrian Agogino, Vytas SunSpiral, and Kagan Tumer. “Learning to Control Complex Tensegrity Robots.” In proceedings of Twelfth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), Saint Paul, Minnesota, May, 2013. Download PDF.

[12] Terrence Fong, Reginald Berka, Maria Bualat, Myron Diftler, Mark Micirie, David Mittman, Vytas SunSpiral, Chris Provencher, “The Human Exploration Telerobotics Project,” In Proceedings, The Global Space Exploration Conference, Washington, DC, May 2012. Download PDF.

[11] Dawn Wheeler, Daniel Chavez-Clemente, Vytas SunSpiral, “FootSpring: A Compliance Model for the ATHLETE Family of Robots.” In Proceedings, 10^th International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space, (i-SAIRAS 2010).  Sapporo, Japan, August 2010. Download PDF.

[10] Vytas SunSpiral, Daniel Chavez-Clemente, Michael Broxton, Leslie Keely, Patrick Mihelich, David Mittman, Curtis Collins, “FootFall: A Ground Based Operations Toolset Enabling Walking for the ATHLETE Rover”, In Proceedings, AIAA Space2008, San Diego, California, Sept. 2008. Download PDF.

[9] Tristan B. Smith, Javier Barreiro, David E. Smith, Vytas SunSpiral, Daniel Chavez-Clemente,
“ATHLETE’s Feet: Multi-Resolution Planning for a Hexapod Robot”, in Proceedings, International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS), Sydney, Australia, Sept. 2008. Download PDF.

[8] Vytas SunSpiral, Mark B. Allan, Rodney Martin, Kevin R. Wheeler, “Modeling and Classifying Six-Dimensional Trajectories for Tele-operation Under Time Delay”, in proceedings, AAAI Spring Symposium, Stanford, CA, 2006 Download PDF.

[7] Kevin Wheeler, Rodney Martin, Mark Allan, Vytas SunSpiral, “Predictive Interfaces for Long-Distance Tele-Operations”, in Proceedings, ISAIRAS Conference, Munich Germany, 2005. Download PDF.

[6] Emmanuel Benazera, Richard Levinson, Thomas Willeke, Howard Cannon, “Runtime Decision Sampling and Branch Utility Re-Evaluation in the Robust Execution of Contingent Plans”, In Proceedings of International Conference of Robotics and Automation, Barcelona, April 2005. Download PDF.

[5] Thomas Willeke, Richard Dearden, “Building Hybrid Rover Models: Lessons Learned,” in Proceedings of 15^th International Workshop on Principals of Diagnosis, Carcassone, France. June 2004. Download PDF.

[4] Richard Dearden, Frank Hutter, Reid Simmons, Sebastian Thrun, Vandi Verma, and Thomas Willeke, “Real-time Fault Detection and Situational Awareness for Rovers: Report on the Mars Technology Program Task”, In Proceedings, IEEE Aerospace Conference, March 2004. Download PDF.

[3] Illah Nourbakhsh, Clay Kunz, Thomas Willeke, “The Mobot Museum Robot Installations: A Five Year Experiment,” In Proceedings of IROS 2003, Las Vegas. Download PDF.

[2] Thomas Willeke, Clayton Kunz, Illah Nourbakhsh. “The History of the Mobot Museum Robot Series: An Evolutionary Study.” Proceedings of FLAIRS 2001. Florida. May 2001. Download PDF.

[1] Clayton Kunz, Thomas Willeke and Illah Nourbakhsh , “Automatic Mapping of Dynamic Office Environments,” In Proceedings, IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, volume 2, pages 1681-1687, 1997.

TECHNICAL REPORTS

Rodney A. Martin, Kevin R. Wheeler, Mark B. Allan, and Vytas SunSpiral. “Optimized algorithms for prediction within robotic tele-operative interfaces.” Technical Report NASA/TM-2010-216417, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, November 2010. Download PDF.

Thomas Willeke. “Genetic Evolution of Behavior-Oriented Robots.” Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming at Stanford 1995, Editor John R. Koza. Stanford University, 1995.

WHITE PAPERS

Vytas SunSpiral. “Automated Location Based Services” an Apisphere Whitepaper, Feb. 2009 Download PDF.