Title: |
Spin is all you need for mobility |
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Speaker: |
Prof. Phanindra Tallapragada |
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Affiliation: |
Clemson University |
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When: |
Friday, January 24, 2025 at 11:00:00 AM |
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Where: |
MRDC Building, Room 4211 |
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Host: |
Alexander Alexeev | |
Abstract 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 robots, articulated tails or fins and propellers in swimming robots or flapping flagella in micro swimmers. Nonlinear dynamics can provide insights into alternative means of generating efficient mobility. The talk will present several examples of locomotion produced by the interplay of variations in the inertia tensor, constraints (holonomic and nonholonomic) and periodic actuation. 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 Rynolds number regime, spin actuation can produce propulsion of microswimmers and spinning swimmers can manipulate small particles in a contactless manner. The talk will demonstrate this framework with a spin driven swimming robot which has a locomotion efficiency approaching that of several species of fish, a spin driven pipe crawling robot, a spin driven jumping robot and a spin driven microswimmer and particle manipulator. Spin is all one needs. |
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Biography Phanindra Tallapragada is an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Clemson University. He obtained his Ph.D in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech in 2010 and did post-doctoral research at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Earlier he obtained his B.Tech 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. |
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Notes |
Zoom link: https://gatech.zoom.us/j/99456471101?pwd=kX4lps67XC9LsGzHeDFJhR2JhrkLz1.1 |