Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar: Adaptive Robots Through Reconfiguration, Compliance, and Contact
Nick Gravish, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
University of California, San Diego
Recent advances in robot materials and algorithms have enabled new levels of adaptive and versatile behavior. In this talk I will describe my lab’s efforts to create robots, mechanisms, and control algorithms capable of adaptive behaviors in response to perturbations from the environment or body morphology. I will first describe how the modulation of material curvature can enable reconfigurable robot appendages and bodies, culminating in new modes of robot manipulation and locomotion. Next, I will describe our work on flapping wing actuation through bioinspired autonomous oscillators with adaptive and responsive dynamics. Lastly, I will describe how to design adaptive proprioceptive feedback laws which can enable robot groups to synchronize locomotion purely through contact interactions. In total this work illustrates how simple mechanisms and algorithms can give rise to a rich design space for dynamic and responsive robots.
For more information on the Maryland Robotics Center see:
https://robotics.umd.edu
Maryland Robotics Center Seminar: Adaptive Robots Through Reconfiguration, Compliance, and Contact
Nick Gravish, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
University of California, San Diego
Recent advances in robot materials and algorithms have enabled new levels of adaptive and versatile behavior. In this talk I will describe my lab’s efforts to create robots, mechanisms, and control algorithms capable of adaptive behaviors in response to perturbations from the environment or body morphology. I will first describe how the modulation of material curvature can enable reconfigurable robot appendages and bodies, culminating in new modes of robot manipulation and locomotion. Next, I will describe our work on flapping wing actuation through bioinspired autonomous oscillators with adaptive and responsive dynamics. Lastly, I will describe how to design adaptive proprioceptive feedback laws which can enable robot groups to synchronize locomotion purely through contact interactions. In total this work illustrates how simple mechanisms and algorithms can give rise to a rich design space for dynamic and responsive robots.
For more information on the Maryland Robotics Center see:
https://robotics.umd.edu
