Year: 2022
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Musculoskeletal systems consist of bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments and other connective tissues that altogether provide function and structure to natural creatures.One of the most intriguing aspects of these architectures is the often inseparable nexus between actuation and control, topology and mechanics, due to the continuum, non-linear nature of their constitutive elements.As a consequence, and in stark contrast with rigid-body robots, soft creatures can harness a wide range of deformations and structural instabilities to effectively cope with complex, unstructured and dynamic environments [1].Thus, biological musculoskeletal architectures, due to their intrinsic distributedness, softness and compliance, exhibit the ability to outsource control tasks to their embodiments, an emerging paradigm denoted as embodied or mechanical intelligence [1]-[3].In this context, the overarching goal of this thesis is to establish modeling, simulation and experimental approaches to investigate principles of embodied intelligence.Towards this vision, my research activities are organized into three main thrusts:(1) Establishment of a computational framework to model and simulate complex musculoskeletal architectures.Central to this framework is Cosserat rods theory.This theory captures 3D deformations and dynamics of elastic slender body objects via an inexpensive one-dimensional representation.These slender elements can then be organized and connected to synthesize active, heterogenous biological layouts.The utility of such approach is demonstrated through the simulation and analysis of a range of biological systems across scales and environments: from simple human joints to full-scale aquatic, terrestrial and aerial creatures.Moreover, this modeling approach is natively integrated with evolutionary optimization strategies, enabling in-silico inverse design of soft (biological) robots.(2) Investigation of embodied control principles of natural soft creatures.This thrust focuses on how biological locomotory performance could originate from the interplay between soft mechanics, muscular actuation and environmental effects.To gain specific insights, snakes are used as proxy.Snakes indeed encapsulate a number of relevant features: they are soft, slender creatures that extensively make use of compliance and environmental effects (friction, contact) to simplify control and achieve locomotory adaptivity.Moreover, from a modeling perspective, they are ideally suited to our Cosserat rods approach, given their
Author: Zhang, Xiaotian
Language: English
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7220827260