| NSF Org: |
CMMI Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | July 25, 2014 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 25, 2014 |
| Award Number: | 1427111 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Irina Dolinskaya
idolinsk@nsf.gov (703)292-7078 CMMI Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation ENG Directorate for Engineering |
| Start Date: | August 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | July 31, 2018 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $1,500,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $1,500,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
506 S WRIGHT ST URBANA IL US 61801-3620 (217)333-2187 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
IL US 61820-7473 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | NRI-National Robotics Initiati |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.041 |
ABSTRACT
Bat flight, perhaps the most advanced and efficient form of animal flight, has long been a source of inspiration for roboticists and biologists alike. This National Robotics Initiative (NRI) collaborative research award supports research aimed at understanding and reproducing the unparalleled agility and resilience of bat flight. Biological studies of bats (their structure, muscle movement, and flight dynamics) will drive the engineering development of mathematical models of robotic flight and the eventual design and implementation of a prototype 30-80cm bat-like robot. The physical flight capabilities of the robot will be augmented with perception and reasoning abilities, with the aim of providing support for construction site activities such as site monitoring, inspection, and general surveillance of the work site to provide image data to enhance situational awareness of human workers. The research involves several disciplines, including biology, aerodynamics, robotics, control systems engineering, and construction engineering.
Aerial robots have nowhere near the agility and efficiency of animal flight, especially in complex, constrained environments. This is not surprising since even the simplest winged robots have complex flight dynamics that pose significant challenges for modeling, design, and control. In the case of bat-inspired robots, these difficulties are exacerbated by the use of under-actuated mechanisms driving wings constructed from flexible membranes. This project will combine biological and engineering research to address these problems. Biological research on the kinematics of bats and their flight will provide a basis for mechanical designs. To control the robot, agile motion planning and flight control algorithms will employ motion primitives that are derived from biological investigation of the dynamics of bat flight. Conversely, models obtained from biological studies will be validated by experimental investigations using the prototype robot, enabling iterative refinement of reduced-order models and control algorithms. Ultimately, the robots will be equipped with sensing systems and planning algorithms, to facilitate localization, mapping, inspection and surveillance at construction sites.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Bat flight, perhaps the most advanced and efficient form of animal flight, has long been a source of inspiration for roboticists and biologists alike. This project made significant advances in understanding and reproducing the unparalleled agility and resilience of bat flight. Biological studies of bats (their structure, muscle movement, and flight dynamics, acquired using motion capture data for wing beat patterns during steady flight observations) motivated the engineering development of mathematical models of robotic flight and the eventual design and implementation of a prototype bat-like robot. The wings of the robot are deformable, and covered with a flexible membrane, which makes controlling flight particularly difficult. The wing designed led to a new kinematic mechanism design that couples flapping and folding motions of the wing, reducing the configuration space to a one-dimensional manifold. We have developed a control scheme that applies LQR methods to a linearized version of the Poincare return map. We have developed trajectory optimization algorithms that, when applied in our control framework, facilitate flapping flight by the vehicle, and we have demonstrated these capabilities in numerous flight tests.
This work has implications for safety and surveillance applications, for example in construction site situations in which worker safety is compromised by lack of situational awareness that could be provided by our bat-like robots, monitoring the work site with surveillance flight patterns.
The research involved several disciplines, including biology, aerodynamics, robotics, control systems engineering, and construction engineering.
Last Modified: 02/19/2019
Modified by: Seth Hutchinson
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