Collaborative Research: Optimal Gaits and Design for Locomoting Systems

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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.