Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics Seminar: Chen Li

Description

Dr. Chen Li, an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, will give a talk entitled "Terradynamics of Animal and Robot Locomotion in Complex 3-D Terrain" for the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics.

Abstract:

Aero- and hydrodynamics have helped us understand how animals fly and swim and develop aerial and aquatic vehicles and robots that move through air and water rapidly, agilely, and efficiently. By contrast, we know surprisingly little about how terrestrial animals move so well in natural terrain, and even the best robots still struggle in complex terrain such as earthquake rubble, cluttered buildings, forest floor, and Martian rocks, an ability required for important applications like search and rescue, structural examination, environmental monitoring, and planetary exploration.

By integrating biology, engineering, and physics studies and developing new experimental tools and theoretical models, our lab is creating the new field of terradynamics to describe complex locomotor-terrain interaction (analogous to fluid-structure interaction), and using terradynamics to better understand animal locomotion and advance robot locomotion in complex terrain.

In this talk, I will give an overview of research in my lab at Johns Hopkins over the last three years to create terradynamics for locomotion in complex 3-D terrain. Particularly, I will highlight: (1) How we create "locomotion energy landscapes" to understand how insects and legged robots transition between different forms of movement to traverse highly cluttered terrain, and (2) how limbless snakes traverse large steps and inspire a snake robot that outperforms previous ones. I will also briefly survey other recent and ongoing projects in the lab.