Optimizing the structure and movement of a robotic bat with biological kinematic synergies
Hoff, Jonathan Edward
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/97469
Description
Title
Optimizing the structure and movement of a robotic bat with biological kinematic synergies
Author(s)
Hoff, Jonathan Edward
Issue Date
2017-04-26
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Hutchinson, Seth A.
Wissa, Aimy
Department of Study
Mechanical Engineering
Discipline
Mechanical Engineering
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.S.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
Aerial robotics
Biologically-inspired robots
Kinematics
Bats
Abstract
In this thesis we present methods to optimize the design and flight characteristics of a biologically-inspired bat-like robot. Recent work has designed the topological structure for the wing kinematics of this robot; here we present methods to optimize the geometry of this structure, and to compute actuator trajectories that yield successful flight behaviors. Our approach is motivated by recent studies on biological bat flight, which have shown that the salient aspects of wing motion can be accurately represented in a low-dimensional space. We use principal components analysis (PCA) to characterize the dominant modes of biological bat flight kinematics, and optimize our robotic design to mimic these. In particular, we use the first and second principal components to shape the parametric kinematics and actuator trajectories through finite state nonlinear constrained optimization. The method yields a robot mechanism that, despite having only five degrees of actuation, possesses several biologically meaningful morphing specializations. We have validated our approach in both simulation and flight experiments with our prototype robotic bat.
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