BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Memento EPFL// BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:MechE Colloquium: Passive Dynamics is a Good Basis for Robot Desig n and Control DTSTART:20190402T121500 DTEND:20190402T131500 DTSTAMP:20260510T105632Z UID:e014b5359cdf64b23e53979456d054ae74ffb9e720dfcbe03fc7f616 CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars DESCRIPTION:Prof. Andy Ruina\, Mechanical Engineering\, Cornell University \nAbstract:\nMany airplanes can\, or nearly can\, glide stably without con trol. So\, it seems natural that the first successful powered flight follo wed from mastery of gliding. Many bicycles can\, or nearly can\, balance t hemselves when in motion. Bicycle design seems to have evolved to gain thi s feature. Also\, we can make toys and ‘robots’ that\, like a stable g lider or coasting bicycle\, stably walk without motors or control in a rem arkably human-like way. Again\, it seems to make sense to use `passive-dyn amics’ as a core for developing the control of walking robots and to gai n understanding of the control of walking people. That's what I used to th ink. But\, so far\, this passive approach has not led to robust walking ro bots. What about human evolution? We didn’t evolve dynamic bodies and th en learn to control them. Rather\, people had elaborate control systems wa y back when we were fish and even worms. However: if control is paramount\ , why is it that uncontrolled passive-dynamic walkers walk so much like hu mans? It seems that energy optimal\, yet robust\, control\, perhaps a prox y for evolutionary development\, arrives at solutions that have some featu res in common with passive-dynamics. Instead of thinking of good powered w alking as passive walking with a small amount of control added\, I now thi nk of good powered walking\, human or robotic\, as highly controlled\, whi le optimized mostly for avoiding falls and\, secondarily\, for minimal act uator use. When well done\, much of the motor effort\, always at the ready \, is usually titrated out. Thus\, deceptively looking\, “passive”.\n\ nBio:\nAndy Ruina has 3 Engineering degrees\, essentially in engineering m echanics\, from Brown University. He was a recipient of the National Scien ce Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award (similar to the more recent NSF Career Award). He has been a Professor at Cornell since 1980\, initially in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (TAM) and now in Mechanica l Engineering (ME). He has taught about 7\,000 students and got the Engine ering College's biggest teaching prize in 2015)\, had about 200 students d o projects in his lab\,  had 14 completed PhDs\, about 10 short-term fore ign visitors and a few post-docs. His Ph.D. training was in solid mechanic s (stress and strain). His research has gone from friction and earthquakes to collisions\, bicycles (e.g.\, stability eigenvalues)\, biomechanics an d robotics (mostly balance and energetics). I knows some dynamics and dyna mical system. Most of his teaching has been in solid mechanics\, dynamics\ , engineering math and robotics. His academic value is more related to mec hanical intuition than to mathematical formalism. I has written a 1000-pag e undergraduate textbook and about 60\, peer-reviewed papers. These are ci ted about 1000 times per year. Twenty six of the papers have been cited ov er 100 times\, and three papers have been cited over 1\,000 times. LOCATION:MED 0 1418 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==MED%200%201418 STATUS:CONFIRMED END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR