Abstract: In this talk, I will describe our recent work building a biologically-inspired bat robot. Bats have a complex skeletal morphology, with both ball-and-socket and revolute joints that interconnect the bones and muscles to create a musculoskeletal system with over 40 degrees of freedom, some of which are passive. Replicating this biological system in a small, lightweight, low-power air vehicle is not only infeasible, but also undesirable; trajectory planning and control for such a system would be intractable, precluding any possibility for synthesizing complex agile maneuvers, or for real-time control. Thus, our goal is to design a robot whose kinematic structure is topologically much simpler than a bat’s, while still providing the ability to mimic the bat-wing morphology during flapping flight, and to find optimal trajectories that exploit the natural system dynamics, enabling effective controller design.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
