UCD Seminar

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Graham Ryland

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Apr 6, 2007, 3:09:17 PM4/6/07

to Competiti...@googlegroups.com, Adam Ruggles

This is a very cool local seminar on robotics at UCD if anyone’s interested in going. I’m assuming that it’s free and anyone can attend:

MAE Seminar Schedule for Academic Year 2006-07

Unless otherwise noted, MAE seminars are held in

1065 Kemper Hall from 2:10 to 3:00 pm.

(Refreshments at 2:00 pm.)

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Andy Ruina

Professor of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Cornell University

Energy-efficient walking robots

The common approach to understanding terrestrial locomotion of animals and robots is to consider the control. Instead, we have focussed on the basic mechanics. The over-riding theme is that locomotion may be best understood by considering ways to minimize energy use. So more effective robots may be built if energy use minimization is considered in both the architecture and the actuation. An extreme of this approach is to consider robots that have no motors in them whatsoever. In about 1990 McGeer, following much older toy designs, showed that gravity powered robots could walk stably. We have extended this Passive Dynamics work, and then put some motors back in. I will show videos of various real and simulated robots. On the theoretical side I will mention that the very existence of walking and running is predicted by energy minimization.