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.

长期以来，发明家们一直怀着敬畏和羡慕的心情看待爬行、游泳和在各种环境中飞行的动物的敏捷和优雅。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令科学家和工程师望而却步。这个项目将确定运动的基本原则，重点是最基本的生物属性之一--顺从的作用。顺应性在生物运动中无处不在，出现在各种形式的生命中，从鱼的弹性肋尾，到昆虫的薄膜翅膀，再到蛇的肌肉发达的身体；当人类转动门把手或拿起勺子--这些对机器人系统来说不是微不足道的任务--他们可以依靠手中的顺应性来被动地适应环境中的小干扰和不确定因素。这个项目寻求弥合刚体力学的经典研究(长期以来一直是机器人学的范畴)和合规的运动生物学策略之间的差距。这项研究将使自然界中出现的合规战略和结构合理化。这些知识反过来可以用来设计新类型的多功能顺应机器，其中可能包括机器人系统中运动和操作的健壮策略，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上，将开发两种新的数学方法来驯服与顺应系统优化相关的复杂性。前者植根于几何力学，在研究简单系统的运动时已被证明是有效的。第二种方法首先用动态成本函数求解最优运动学(如游泳运动员的最优泳姿)，然后求出最优运动学以求出相关的动力学参数(如弯曲刚度)，从而反转优化问题。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中的作用。通过几十年的累积研究，科学界已经对依从性在单独应用中的作用建立了合理的理解，如步行和跑步，但关于这一概念如何扩展到其他模式，如爬行、游泳和昆虫飞行，人们相对知之甚少。这项研究将通过调查潜在的物理原理来解决这个问题，这些原理激发了每个系统的形式和生理。然而，最大的贡献将来自于这些结果的合并。通过开发多个移动模式的新见解，该项目旨在将这些发现扩展到一个普遍的合规和移动框架中。然后，这个框架将成为工程师的起点，他们可以将自己的系统定位在更大的合规设计方法学地图中。