Related papers: Mathematics of stable tensegrity structures
Tensegrity mechanisms have several interesting properties that make them suitable for a number of applications. Their analysis is generally challenging because the static equilibrium conditions often result in complex equations. A class of…
Structural stiffness plays an important role in engineering design. The analysis of stiffness requires precise experiments and computational models that can be difficult or time-consuming to procure. A novel relation between modal and…
Tensegrity robots are composed of rigid struts and flexible cables. They constitute an emerging class of hybrid rigid-soft robotic systems and are promising systems for a wide array of applications, ranging from locomotion to assembly. They…
The study of slender elastic structures is an archetypical problem in continuum mechanics, dynamical systems and bifurcation theory, with a rich history dating back to Euler's seminal work in the 18th century. These filamentary elastic…
Future robots will navigate perilous, remote environments with resilience and autonomy. Researchers have proposed building robots with compliant bodies to enhance robustness, but this approach often sacrifices the autonomous capabilities…
Variable stiffness is a key capability in biological and robotic systems, enabling adaptive interaction across tasks and environments. Mechanical metamaterials offer an alternative to conventional mechatronic solutions by encoding stiffness…
In this paper, we introduce a design principle to develop novel soft modular robots based on tensegrity structures and inspired by the cytoskeleton of living cells. We describe a novel strategy to realize tensegrity structures using planar…
Random packings of stiff rods are self-supporting mechanical structures stabilized by long range interactions induced by contacts. To understand the geometrical and topological complexity of the packings, we first deploy X-ray computerized…
Animals can finely modulate their leg stiffness to interact with complex terrains and absorb sudden shocks. In feats like leaping and sprinting, animals demonstrate a sophisticated interplay of opposing muscle pairs that actively modulate…
Physical and chemical properties of 2D material are highly sensitive to its structures whose regularity are seldom investigated, here we proposed a simple mechanical model whose covalent bonds are connected by angle springs, with which we…
This study examines the mechanical behavior of a novel class of mechanical metamaterials alternating pentamode lattices and stiffening plates. The unit cell of such lattices consists of a sub-lattice of the face cubic-centered unit cell…
The mystery behind the bird nest's construction is not well understood. Our study focuses on the stability of a self-supporting nest-like structure. Firstly, we derived a stable/unstable phase boundary for the structure at the fixed…
This paper presents the equilibrium and stiffness study of clustered tensegrity structures (CTS) considering pulley sizes. We first derive the geometric relationship between clustered strings and pulleys, where the nodal vector is chosen as…
A large family of deployable filamentary structures can be built by connecting two elastic rods along their length. The resulting structure has interesting shapes that can be stabilized by tuning the material properties of each rod. To…
This paper presents a Lagrangian approach to simulating multibody dynamics in a tensegrity framework with an ability to tackle holonomic constraint violations in an energy-preserving scheme. Governing equations are described using…
A novel unified approach to jointly optimize structural design parameters, actuator and sensor precision and controller parameters is presented in this paper. The joint optimization problem is posed as a covariance control problem, where…
The stability of the multiple equilibrium states of a hexagram ring with six curved sides is investigated. Each of the six segments is a rod having the same length and uniform natural curvature. These rods are bent uniformly in the plane of…
Tensegrities synergistically combine tensile (cable) and rigid (link) elements to achieve structural integrity, making them lightweight, packable, and impact resistant. Consequently, they have high potential for locomotion in unstructured…
Single-loop elastic rings can be folded into multi-loop equilibrium configurations. In this paper, the stability of several such multi-loop states which are either circular or straight are investigated analytically and illustrated by…
The nonlinear mechanics of a flexible elastic rod constrained at its edges by a pair of sliding sleeves is analyzed. The planar equilibrium configurations of this variable-length elastica are found to have shape defined only by the…