Nathan Usevitch
Brigham Young University, UT·Engineering
Can robots move in new ways by storing energy differently or by being built from many soft parts? The projects here explore two unusual robot designs.
- Fields
Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
robotics
jumping robots
flywheel
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Develop and experimentally test models of the energy a flywheel-powered jumping robot can store, based on flywheel shape, size, material, motor power, surrounding fluid and payload.
- Design and test nonlinear mechanical transmissions that efficiently convert a spinning flywheel's rotation into straight-line takeoff motion while controlling forces during the jump.
- Create planning and feedback control methods for flywheel robots, including energy-aware path planning over rough terrain and orientation control in flight using gyroscopic effects.
- Build a scalable kinematic model describing how coordinated inflation of many balloon actuators produces motion and shape change, and use it to guide robot hardware design.
- Construct and compare balloon-network robot configurations for motion accuracy, payload capacity above 100 times their own weight, and robustness when individual balloons fail.
More about the research
One is a small jumping robot powered by a spinning flywheel. The other is a soft, shape-changing robot made from a network of balloons. Both aim at tasks that ordinary wheeled or legged robots handle poorly, such as crossing rough ground, squeezing through tight spaces, or lifting heavy loads safely around people.
Why it matters
Flywheel-powered jumping robots could aid search and rescue, structural inspection, environmental monitoring and exploration of remote, rugged places. Soft balloon-network robots could help older adults and patients shift between sitting, standing and reclining, and could help in disasters by squeezing through narrow gaps and then inflating to lift debris or brace collapsing structures.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jake Abbott
University of Utah, UT·Engineering
Characterize the natural and motor-driven dynamics of the magnetic cogging parallel-elastic actuator (MC-PEA), a motor paired with magnetic springs that hold stable positions at no energy cost, and develop efficient control methods.
Cagdas Onal
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA·Engineering
Develop a modular, origami-inspired continuum robot arm (CoBRA) with customizable design algorithms, so the arm can be tailored to specific assistive tasks in homes and healthcare settings.
Maegan Tucker
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Engineering
Extend contraction theory, a mathematical test of whether nearby motions of a system converge, to hybrid systems that mix smooth motion with sudden impacts. Use it to estimate regions of attraction for contact-rich robots.
The school
Brigham Young University: 4 labs on PI Pages, $158M a year on research, 114 research doctorates a year.
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