Roll, Crawl, Walk, Climb, and Jump: Robot Locomotion Inspired by Nature and Beyond

1. 제 목 : Roll, Crawl, Walk, Climb, and Jump: Robot Locomotion Inspired by Nature and Beyond

2. 연 사 : Prof. Dennis Hong
(Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, USA)

3. 일 시 : 2007년 8월 16일(목) 16:00~17:00

4. 장 소 : 301동 1512호

5. 내 용 :
Most mobile robots we see today utilize wheels or treads to move around. But why don’t we see
such locomotion mechanisms in nature? Or a better question we should ask is: why don’t we use
locomotion mechanisms used in nature for creating robots? Animals move in various ways;
crawling, walking, jumping, and undulating to name a few. What are the mechanisms behind these
motions and why do they use them? Inspired by biology, when and how should we apply these
concepts to create robots with higher mobility? In this talk, we present the concept of
bioinspiration for robotics. Bioinspiration does not mean simply copying ideas from nature,
but rather learning the mechanisms behind it and being inspired by them to create novel
concepts and solutions that go even beyond what we see in nature. This talk will present
several biologically inspired novel locomotion strategies for mobile robots currently under
development at RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms Laboratory) including a unique everting robot
inspired by the motility mechanisms of amoebae, a rock climbing robot that uses matching
behavior, an actuated spoke wheel system for unstructured environments, a hexapod crawler with
dry adhesive feet for zero gravity space applications, a novel three legged robot that walks
more like a human, a scaffolding climbing serpentine robot that rolls up to move, and an
autonomous bipedal humanoid robot that can even play a game of soccer. The ability of robots
created with bioinspiration can go even beyond that of animals in nature.

6. 연사약력 :
Dennis Hong is an Assistant Professor and the Director of RoMeLa (Robotics & Mechanisms
Laboratory) of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Virginia Tech. His research expertise
lie in the area of novel robot locomotion mechanisms, design and analysis of mechanical
systems, kinematics, and dynamics. He was the inventor of ‘whole skin locomotion’ for mobile
robots inspired by amoeboid motility mechanisms, and pioneered in generating and utilizing
everting motion for locomotion in soft body robots. His work on this area was awarded with the
prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award from the National Science
Foundation (NSF) in 2007, and the Biomimicry Award / Best Paper Award at the 29th ASME
Mechanisms and Robotics Conference in 2005. He also won the Outstanding Assistant Professor
award at the College of Engineering in 2007 and the ASPIRES Award in 2004 at Virginia Tech,
the ASME Freudenstein /GM Young Investigator Award in 2005, and was selected as a NASA Summer
Faculty Fellow at JPL in 2005. Dr. Hong received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering
from the University of Wisconsin- Madison (1994), his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical
Engineering from Purdue University (1999, 2002). Dr. Hong also has a number of patents for
novel robot locomotion mechanisms and devices for medical applications.

7. 문 의 : 기계항공공학부 박종우 교수(☏ 880-7133)