Collaborative Research: Optimal Gaits and Design for Locomoting Systems

移动无处不在。动物将内部关节运动转化为位移的能力启发我们提出这样一个问题：？我们如何才能使人工系统具有同样的运动便利性？我们建议为一大类运动系统设计、控制和规划运动。这些系统既在陆地上也在水中机动，并经历动态和非完整约束，这些约束可能会动态变化。具体地说，建议的工作旨在：(1)开发工具来设计和优化步态，即产生所需网络运动的循环内部运动，以及(2)使用这些工具来设计运动机械系统的最佳形态。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来开发有效设计步态的技术。具体地说，我们将开发工具来分析和处理重建方程，以便将其用于步态设计。有了这些新的有效工具，我们可以为运动系统设计最优步态，从运动学系统开始，再到动力学系统，两者都具有非完整约束。这项拟议的工作将使用这些步态开发工具来设计最优的机器人形态。提高对运动的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，对于城市搜索和救援或在难以到达的地点搜索简易爆炸装置等应用，例如大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，而是这项工作中发展的理论将促进机器人的移动性以及如何将其量化，从而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.