Collaborative Research: From Biology to Mechanism: Harnessing Compliance in Locomoting Systems

合作研究：从生物学到机制：利用运动系统的合规性

• 批准号: 1517842
• 负责人: Anette Hosoi
• 金额: $ 24万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1517842&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Biology; Mechanism; Harnessing

Inventors have long viewed the agility and grace of animals that crawl, swim, and fly in all environments with awe and envy. However, the ability to replicate the versatility, stability, and efficiency of biological locomotion in engineered systems has eluded scientists and engineers alike. This project will identify fundamental principles of locomotion, with an emphasis on the role of one of the most fundamental biological attributes, compliance. Compliance is ubiquitous in biological locomotion, appearing in diverse forms of life from the elastic ribbed tail of a fish, to the membrane wings of an insect, to the sinewy muscular body of a snake; when a human turns a door knob or picks up a spoon -- tasks that are nontrivial for robotic systems -- they can rely on compliance in the hand to passively adjust to small disturbances and uncertainties in the environment. This project seeks to bridge the gap between classical studies in rigid body mechanics that have long been the purview of the discipline of robotics, and compliant biological strategies for locomotion. The research will rationalize compliant strategies and structures that appear in nature. This knowledge can in turn be used to design new classes of versatile compliant machines, which may include robust strategies for locomotion and manipulation in robotic systems and new compliant mechanisms for harvesting energy. This research, which lies at the intersection of controls and the mechanics of continuously deformable systems, will develop two new mathematical approaches to tame the complexity associated with optimization of compliant systems. The first takes its roots in geometric mechanics, which has already proven effective in the study of locomotion of simple systems. The second inverts the optimization problem by first solving for optimal kinematics (e.g. optimal stroke patterns for swimmers) with a dynamic cost function, and subsequently inverting the optimal kinematics to find the associated dynamic parameters (such as bending stiffness). In addition to the development of these two new mathematical tools, the project will investigate the role of compliance within the context of different biological locomotion modes. Through decades of cumulative research, the scientific community has established a reasonable understanding of the role of compliance in isolated applications, such as legged walking and running, but comparatively little is known in terms of how this concept extends to other modes such as crawling, swimming, and insect flight. This research will address the issue through investigations of the underlying physical principles that motivate the form and physiology of each of these systems. However, the greatest contribution will come through the amalgamation of these results. By developing new insights across multiple locomotion modes, this project aims to extend the findings into a generalized framework for compliance and locomotion. This framework will then serve as a jumping off point for engineers, who can situate their own systems within a greater map of compliant design methodologies.

发明家们长期以来一直对在各种环境中爬行、游泳和飞行的动物的敏捷性和优雅感到敬畏和羡慕。然而，在工程系统中复制生物运动的多功能性、稳定性和效率的能力一直困扰着科学家和工程师。该项目将确定运动的基本原理，重点是最基本的生物属性之一——顺从性的作用。顺从性在生物运动中无处不在，出现在各种生命形式中，从鱼有弹性的肋状尾巴，到昆虫的膜翅，再到蛇的强健肌肉躯体； 当人类转动门把手或拿起勺子时（对于机器人系统来说这些任务并不简单），它们可以依靠手的顺应性来被动地适应环境中的小干扰和不确定性。 该项目旨在弥合长期以来属于机器人学科范围的刚体力学经典研究与合规生物运动策略之间的差距。该研究将使自然界中出现的合规策略和结构合理化。 这些知识反过来可用于设计新型多功能顺应机器，其中可能包括机器人系统中运动和操纵的稳健策略以及用于收集能量的新顺应机制。这项研究位于控制和连续变形系统力学的交叉点，将开发两种新的数学方法来解决与柔性系统优化相关的复杂性。 第一个源于几何力学，它已经在简单系统的运动研究中被证明是有效的。第二个方法通过首先用动态成本函数求解最佳运动学（例如游泳者的最佳划水模式）来反转优化问题，然后反转最佳运动学以找到相关的动态参数（例如弯曲刚度）。除了开发这两种新的数学工具外，该项目还将研究顺应性在不同生物运动模式下的作用。通过数十年的累积研究，科学界已经对顺应性在孤立应用（例如腿行走和跑步）中的作用建立了合理的理解，但相对而言，人们对这一概念如何扩展到其他模式（例如爬行、游泳）知之甚少。和昆虫飞行。这项研究将通过研究激发每个系统的形式和生理学的基本物理原理来解决这个问题。 然而，最大的贡献将来自这些结果的合并。通过开发跨多种运动模式的新见解，该项目旨在将研究结果扩展到合规性和运动的通用框架中。该框架将作为工程师的起点，他们可以将自己的系统置于更大的合规设计方法图谱中。