Collaborative Research: Optimal Gaits and Design for Locomoting Systems

运动无处不在。动物将内部关节运动转化为位移的能力激发了我们的疑问：？我们怎样才能赋予人工系统同样的运动能力？我们建议设计，控制和计划运动为一个广泛的运动系统。这些系统既可以在陆地上也可以在水中进行机动，并经历可能动态变化的动力学和非完整约束。具体而言，提出的工作旨在：(1)开发工具来设计和优化步态，循环内部运动，从而产生所需的净运动；(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，提出的工作将借鉴微分几何的基本原理来开发技术，以有效地设计步态。具体来说，我们将开发工具来分析和操作重建方程，以便它可以用于步态设计。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。提出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。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，用于城市搜索和救援或在难以到达的位置搜索简易爆炸装置，例如主要城市港口普遍存在的角落和缝隙。提出的工作不会为这些任务提供一个系统，而是在这项工作中发展的理论将推进机器人的机动性以及如何量化它，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 inspire us 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) develop tools 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.