Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-27-2025
Abstract
Most walking organisms tend to have relatively light limbs and heavy bodies in order to facilitate rapid limb motion. However, the limbs of brittle stars (Class Ophiuroidea) are primarily comprised of dense skeletal elements, with potentially much higher mass and density compared to the body disk. To date, little is understood about how the relatively unique distribution of mass in these animals influences their locomotion. In this work, we use a brittle star inspired soft robot and computational modeling to examine how the distribution of mass and density in brittle stars affects their movement. The soft robot is fully untethered, powered using embedded shape memory alloy actuators, and designed based on the morphology of a natural brittle star. Computational simulations of the brittle star model are performed in a differentiable robotics physics engine in conjunction with an iterative linear quadratic regulator to explore the relationship between different mass distributions and their optimal gaits. The results from both methods indicate that there are robust physical advantages to having the majority of the mass concentrated in the limbs for brittle star-like locomotion, providing insight into the physical forces at play.
Keywords
biomimetic robot, mass distribution, optimal control
Language
English
Publication Title
Bioinspiration and Biomimetics
Grant
1929900
Rights
©2025TheAuthor(s). This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Zach J Patterson et al 2025 Bioinspir. Biomim. 20 036003
Manuscript Version
Final Publisher Version