Versatile Multidomain Robot Mobility Driven by High-Speed Unbalanced Rotors

About This Grant

This project investigates a variety of different robot locomotion that can be achieved using only fast unbalanced rotors for actuation. Preliminary experiments have demonstrated that such systems can be used to roll, jump, crawl, climb, swim, and fly. Initial analyses have connected different discrete modes of motion with special relationships between the amplitude of the rotor imbalance and the speed of the rotor spin. The project will extend understanding of these relationships, allowing the robot’s mechanical structure to be designed together with its control system, thus providing the ability to select between different mobility modes. The approach will be applied to robots made of multiple rigid components as well as robots made of soft materials. The spin dynamics of internal rotors can be easily and accurately controlled, suggesting that this approach may have practical advantages for ease of operation. The robots considered in this project have potential applications in defense, monitoring, exploration, and medicine. Inexpensive and mechanically simple robots designed in this project will be used as the basis for STEM outreach activities to high school students in upstate South Carolina. The project will realize a framework for novel multidomain mobility through a deep understanding of novel mechanics. The approach will build upon the analysis of net inertial displacements corresponding to high frequency oscillations of shape variables on a configuration manifold in the context of parametric resonance and vibrational stabilization as exhibited, for example, by the nonlinear Mathieu equation. Extensions of this framework to discontinuous systems will capture movements such as jumping. Experiments to explore potential new capabilities will include rolling-jumping robots capable of traversing unstructured and rough terrain, fast-crawling robots capable of climbing pipes or trees, efficient and agile swimming robots, and lightweight flapping-wing flying robots. 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.