Putting a Spin in Robots

Mobility in robots is usually achieved by a few common means; with a few exceptions these are wheels or legs in ground robots, propellers in flying and swimming robots. Extending robot mobility to unstructured domains requires a different paradigm: Robot mobility as an embodiment of nonlinear dynamics. The talk will present several examples of robot locomotion which are an embodiment of nonlinear phenomena such as the interplay of periodic actuation, periodic variations in the inertia tensor, constraints (holonomic and nonholonomic) and resonances. The actuation of such robots is achieved by means of internal actuators that do not directly interact with the environment. Periodic motion or spin of an internal body such as a rotor can transfer high frequency reaction forces and moments that in turn can produce oscillations of flexible structures like tails in a fish-like robot and in legs or cilia in a soft robot. Further these spin-generated forces modulate the forces at surfaces producing discontinuous phenomenon like slipping and jumping. In the low Reynolds number regime, spin actuation can produce propulsion of microswimmers and these can also manipulate small particles in a contactless manner. The talk will demonstrate this framework with a spin driven fish-like swimming robot, a spin driven pipe crawling robot, a spin driven jumping robot and a spin driven microswimmer and particle manipulator. 

Phanindra Tallapragada is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University. He obtained his PhD in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech in 2010 and did post doctoral research at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Earlier, he obtained his BTech and M.Tech in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He joined Clemson University as an assistant professor in 2013. His research interests are in dynamical systems and bioinspired locomotion related to terrestrial motion, fish-like swimming, low Reynolds number swimming and operator methods for transport and manipulation in dynamical systems.