Collaborative Research: Leveraging Fluid-Structure Interactions for Efficient Control in Geophysical Flows

微型车辆为各种机器人和自动化应用提供了低成本的平台。它们出色的机动性、敏捷性和在真正的三维环境中操作的能力，使无处不在的低成本传感器能够用于一系列数据收集和监测任务。最近，微型空中、地面和海上交通工具的发展取得了许多令人兴奋和引人注目的进展。然而，由于车辆重量轻，计算和功率能力有限，由于车辆的运动受到其运行环境的显着影响，因此控制它们更具挑战性。该奖项支持理解流体结构相互作用所需的基础研究，即水或空气中的小型车辆如何在周围流动中移动和反应。研究人员将利用这些见解为低成本微型车辆的设计和控制建立一个新的范例，从而产生更节能的系统，从而延长其使用寿命。这项工作是一项跨学科的努力，结合了流体动力学、控制理论和重构规划方面的知识。它将改善对动态和不确定环境的导航和监测，并将在天气和气候预测、环境监测、渔业科学和航运等领域贡献基础知识，从而使美国经济和社会受益。它还将为培养机器人和流体动力学交叉学科的本科生和研究生提供机会。这个项目背后的主要观点是，小型、资源有限的车辆可以利用其几乎无限的环境力量来延长自身的电力预算和使用寿命。特别是，通过调整它们的形态，这些飞行器可以在流体环境中调整它们的运输特性，并在没有主动推进的情况下控制它们的轨迹。实现这一愿景需要动力学和控制方面的基础科学，以理解不仅具有体积和惯性，而且可以重新配置其形状的车辆系统中的流固相互作用。该项目将在这个方向上迈出最初的一步：1)表征宽高比和质量对车辆被动传输特性的影响以及这些复杂动力系统背后的惯性相干结构；2)综合考虑惯性效应和潜在流固耦合的设计和运动控制策略；3)研究形态重构和主动推进在不同流体流动中的效率权衡。在该项目过程中获得的知识和见解将扩展微型自动驾驶汽车执行长期操作的能力，并为未来大规模部署微型机器的创新奠定基础。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。

Microvehicles provide a low-cost platform for a variety of robotics and automation applications. Their excellent maneuverability, agility, and ability to operate in truly three-dimensional environments have enabled ubiquitous, low-cost sensors for a range of data collection and monitoring tasks. Recent developments in micro-aerial, ground, and marine vehicles have advanced in many exciting and high-profile ways. However, because of the vehicles' low weight and limited computational and power capacities, controlling them is more challenging since the motion of the vehicles is significantly impacted by the environments in which they operate. This award supports fundamental research needed to understand fluid-structure interactions, that is, how small vehicles in water or air move and react within a surrounding flow. The investigators will use these insights to establish a new paradigm for the design and control of low-cost microvehicles, resulting in more power-efficient systems and, thus, extending their lifetimes. The work is an interdisciplinary effort combining knowledge in fluid dynamics, control theory, and reconfiguration planning. It will improve navigation and monitoring of dynamic and uncertain environments, and will contribute fundamental knowledge in the areas of weather and climate prediction, environmental monitoring, fisheries science, and shipping, to name just a few, thus benefiting the U.S. economy and society. It will also provide opportunities for training interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate students at the intersection of robotics and fluid dynamics.The main insight underlying this project is that small, resource-constrained vehicles can exploit their nearly limitless environmental forces to extend their own power budgets and operating lifetimes. In particular, by adjusting their morphologies, these vehicles can adapt their transport properties in a fluid environment and control their trajectories without active propulsion. Accomplishing this vision will require foundational science in dynamics and control to understand fluid-structure interactions in systems of vehicles that not only have volume and inertia, but can also reconfigure their shape. The project will make initial steps in this direction by: 1) characterizing the effect of aspect ratio and mass on a vehicle's passive transport properties and the inertial coherent structures underlying these complex dynamical systems; 2) synthesizing design and motion control strategies incorporating inertial effects and the underlying fluid-structure interactions; and 3) investigating the efficiency trade-offs between morphological reconfiguration and active propulsion in a variety of fluid flows. The knowledge and insights developed during the course of this program will expand the capabilities of micro-autonomous vehicles to perform long-term operations and will lay the groundwork for future innovations in the large-scale deployment of micro-machines.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.