Other Lab Projects

In nature, we find a variety of birds and insects with flapping wings that can efficiently move around. The goals of the studies were to understand the underlying science and design such robotics systems.

Infants and toddlers suffer from mobility impairments due to diseases such as cerebral palsy, downe’ syndrome and others. These impairments affect the development trajectories of these individuals due to lack of mobility. Our studies show that even 6 month old children can learn to drive a mobile robot. This augmented mobility helps them improve their development trajectory.

The dynamics of robots in space and micro-gravity environment is different due to the absence of a fixed base in the system. Planning and control algorithms are developed for these systems.

Through addition of springs or compliant elements, mechanical systems can be designed to be gravity balanced in any configuration, i.e., the gravity does not affect their motion.

Robots are designed which are controlled by wires (or cables) in tension. An N degree-of-freedom system requires a minimum of N+1 wires for control of the system.

The structures of the dynamic systems are used for developing analytical/numerical methods for optimization of their performance.