U. Tokyo's TwinX robot: one wire links two wheeled-legged bots for morphing and teamwork
LexiLove · x · 2026-10-17
Researchers at the University of Tokyo's JSK Lab (Shintaro Inoue, Kento Kawaharazuka et al.) published TwinX in Advanced Intelligent Systems: two wheeled-legged robots connected by a single interbody wire. When docked, winding the wire enables reconfiguration into quadrupedal, swerve-drive and mobile-manipulator modes; when separated, the same wire supports remote object enclosure, hooking and force transmission. The authors position the interbody wire as a design element distinct from rigid links — maintaining variable-length, tension-based relations that itself generates function.
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