סמינר מחלקה של יצהר אור - דינמיקה לא ליניארית ומכניקה של תנועה רובוטית גלית (ביו-).

School of Mechanical Engineering Seminar
Monday May 22.5.2023 at 14:00

Wolfson Building of Mechanical Engineering, Room 206

Nonlinear dynamics and mechanics of undulatory (bio-) robotic locomotion

Prof. Yizhar Or

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technion

Biological creatures in nature harness mechanical interaction with their surrounding environment in order to create propulsion in diversity of locomotion mechanisms. Inspired by these fascinating biological locomotion capabilities, many articulated robotic systems apply various actuation mechanisms in order to induce time-periodic shape changes that generate propulsion. Optimization of the robots’ locomotive performance in various conditions is of crucial practical importance. This requires utilizing simple theoretical models of the locomotion system’s dynamics. Analysis of such models using methods of nonlinear dynamical systems enables understanding the effect of robot’s structure and actuation inputs on its dynamic behavior and locomotive performance.

In this talk, we present some experiments of robot locomotion systems and present analysis of simple models of their nonlinear dynamics and mechanics. For robotic micro-swimmers, we begin with the well-known Purcell’s swimmer and its variants, and extend to magnetically-actuated micro-swimmers with flexible joints. We also study the inertia-dominated locomotion of snake-like robotic swimmer and passive elastic joint. Next, we study the motion of under-actuated skateboard-like toys whose nonlinear dynamics is governed by ideal non-holonomic constraints and their relaxations with frictional dissipation models. In all these cases, we show how analysis of the locomotor’s nonlinear dynamics reveals direction changes, stability transitions, and bifurcations of multiple co-existing periodic solutions. Finally (pending time constraints), we will present the dynamics and control of bipedal robots on slippery surfaces.

Short bio:

Yizhar Or received his BSc (2001) and PhD (2007, direct track) in Mechanical Engineering, Technion. In 2007-2009 he has been a post-doctoral scholar at California Institute of Technology in Dept. of Control and Dynamical Systems, and was awarded the Fulbright and Bikura post-doctoral fellowships. He has been appointed as faculty member at Technion in 2009. Yizhar’s research interests are nonlinear dynamics, mechanics and control of articulated robotic locomotion, including swimmers, underactuated nonholonomic vehicles, and frictional contact-induced hybrid dynamics of legged robots.

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https://tau-ac-il.zoom.us/j/86497933118