Collaborative Research: Optimal Gaits and Design for Locomoting Systems

到处都是运动。动物在将内部关节运动转化为位移方面所表现出的能力激发了我们提出这样一个问题：？我们怎样才能使人工系统具有同样的运动便利性呢？我们建议设计，控制和规划运动的一个广泛的类的移动系统。这些系统在陆地和水中都有机动性，并经历可能动态变化的动力学和非完整约束。具体来说，拟议的工作旨在：（1）开发工具，以设计和优化步态，循环内部运动，导致所需的净运动和（2）使用这些工具来设计最佳的形态，以适应机械系统。为了实现这些目标，拟议的工作将利用微分几何的基本原理，开发技术，有效地设计步态。具体来说，我们将开发工具来分析和操纵重建方程，使其可用于步态设计。有了这些新的有效的工具，我们可以设计最佳的步态系统，从运动学系统和移动到动力学系统，都与非完整约束。然后，拟议的工作将使用这些步态开发工具来设计最佳的机器人形态。对运动的更好理解对于能够在具有挑战性的地形中导航的机制至关重要，例如，用于城市搜索和救援等应用，或在难以到达的位置搜索简易爆炸装置，例如主要城市港口中普遍存在的角落和缝隙。 拟议的工作不会为这些任务提供一个系统，而是在这项工作中开发的理论将推进机器人的移动性以及如何量化它，以便实现这些应用并推进对运动的科学理解。

Locomotion is everywhere. The capabilities that animals exhibit in converting internal joint motions into displacements inspires us to to ask the question: ?How can we imbue artificial systems with the same ease of motion?? We propose to design, control, and plan motions for a broad class of locomoting systems. These systems maneuver both on land and in the water, and experience dynamics and nonholonomic constraints which may change dynamically. Specifically, the proposed work seeks to: (1) developtools to design and optimize gaits, cyclic internal motions that result in a desired net motion and (2) use these tools to design optimal morphologies for locomoting mechanical systems. To achieve these goals, the proposed work will draw upon fundamentals of differential geometry to develop techniques to efficiently design gaits. Specifically, we will develop tools to analyze and manipulate the reconstruction equation so that it can be used for gait design. With these new efficient tools, we can design optimal gaits for locomoting systems, starting with kinematic systems and moving on to dynamic systems, both with nonholonomic constraints. The proposed work will then use these gait development tools to design optimal robot morphologies.An improved understanding of locomotion is vital for mechanisms that can navigate in challenging terrains, e.g., for applications like urban search and rescue or searching for IEDs in hard to reach locations, such as the nooks and crannies prevalent in the ports of major cities. The proposed work will not provide a system for these tasks, but rather the theory developed in this work will advance robotic mobility and how to quantify it, so that these applications can be achieved and the scientific understanding of locomotion is advanced.