CAREER: Physical Principles and Applications of Plant-Inspired Tip Growth for Robotics

这项教师早期职业发展（Career）资助将研究一种新型软机器人行为的物理原理：受植物启发的尖端生长“藤蔓机器人”。目前，对这种新型软体机器人的正式认识是有限的。该项目将研究葡萄树机器人的基本限制和全方位的能力。这个项目的好处有三个方面：(1)科学的进步-在这项工作中创造的vine机器人的基本理解将使机器人的设计成为科学发现的工具。例如，藤蔓机器人将帮助考古学家探索废墟，生物学家探索地下生物；(2)社会-这项工作使机器人能够展示新的功能；小型医用藤蔓机器人将实现安全高效的血管内手术，促进国民健康，挖掘藤蔓机器人将使人们能够进入大部分未开发的地下世界；(3)教育-以软机器人为中心的教育内容，旨在吸引和活跃，同时激发创造力，解决问题和批判性思维，将培养下一代工程师和科学家为世界做出有影响力的贡献。该项目的研究目标是使用分析建模和假设驱动实验来阐明控制vine机器人行为的物理原理。创建严格描述其行为的知识体系以实现该概念的全部潜力是至关重要的。本项目将完成三个目标，其中研究者将：(1)研究自由空间中的动态生长，建立潜在的物理原理；(2)研究受限环境下的动态生长；(3)应用目标1和目标2的原理来实现新的藤蔓机器人应用：人体路径中的医用藤蔓机器人和地下世界中的挖洞机器人。从新的缩放定律到vine机器人工作空间的形式化，再到对障碍物相互作用力的预测性理解，所获得的知识将有助于为这一新兴的软机器人子领域奠定基础。这不仅可以实现参数优化，还可以从根本上为葡萄树机器人提供新的方法和设计。更广泛地说，新的理解将推动软机器人领域的发展——推进我们对软系统的理解，这些软系统会变形，并动态地适应环境。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will study the physical principles underlying the behavior of a new type of soft robot: the tip-growing plant-inspired “vine robot.” Currently, the formal understanding for this new soft robot is limited. This project will investigate the fundamental limits and full range of capabilities of the vine robots. The benefits of this project are threefold: (1) Progress of Science - The basic understanding of vine robots created during this work will enable the design of robots as tools for scientific discovery. For instance, vine robots will aid archeologists exploring ruins, and biologists exploring underground creatures; (2) Societal - The robots enabled by this work will demonstrate new functionality; miniaturized medical vine robots will enable safe and efficient endovascular surgery to advance national health, and burrowing vine robots will enable access to the largely unexplored subterranean world; and (3) Educational - The soft robot-centered educational content, designed to be engaging and active, while eliciting creativity, problem solving and critical thinking, will prepare the next generation of engineers and scientists to make impactful contributions to the world.The research objective of this project is to use analytical modeling and hypothesis-driven experimentation to elucidate the physical principles governing the behavior of vine robots. It is critical to create the body of knowledge that rigorously describes its behavior to realize the full potential of this concept. This project will be accomplished in three Aims, in which the researcher will: (1) Investigate dynamic growth in free space to establish the underlying physical principles; (2) Investigate dynamic growth in constrained environments: and (3) Apply principles from Aims 1 and 2 to enable new vine robot applications: medical vine robots in the body’s pathways and burrowing robots in the subterranean world. The knowledge gained—from new scaling laws to a formalization of vine robot workspace to a predictive understanding of obstacle interaction force—will help lay the foundational understanding for this fledgling sub-field of soft robotics. This will enable not only parameter optimization, but fundamentally new approaches and designs for vine robots. More broadly, the new understanding will advance the field of soft robotics—advancing our understanding of soft systems that deform and dynamically adapt to their environment.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.