Simulación y diseño de un metamaterial blando con elementos actuadores

Abstract

[EN] The goal of this thesis is to present a preliminary study into developing damage resistant peristalitic gaits in soft robotic matter. To do so, we’ll explore ways to simulate, control and design soft robotic matter: a soft, modular, actuated meta-material. That is, a piece of soft material of any shape (e.g. a rectangular plate) with a certain lattice-like mesostrucutre of cells (e.g. grid of hollow cubic modules). Each of this cells has some simple autonomous (non-centralised) control logic (e.g. a micro-controller), environment sensing (e.g. digital communication with the neighbours), and actuation (e.g. inflation). One of the main challenges is to create a control agorithm which can coordinate all cells in a decentralized way. Firstly, tools to digitally model the dynamics of the mechanical and control system have been developed. For the mechanical part, a general dynamical nonlinear model solver has been developed (in MATLAB) that can simulate the time evolution of arbitrary elastic structures with active control elements. For the control system, a simplified model will be used, implemented in MATLAB, and its output fed to the mechanical model. Then, multiple decentralised control strategies capable of coordinating all the cells and creating damage resistant gaits will be proposed and tested.