Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 2 Summer 2018 | Page 15

and establishing the science behind the
tails’ potential for usefulness, the team has
come up with new mathematical modeling
approaches that are widely applicable for
flexible structures beyond tails. Because of
their multiple mode shapes, the tails allow
for a greater range of freedom than single
degree of freedom instruments.
the tail can move in a range of positions
– in a sphere – allowing it much greater
workspace.”
Like evolution, Ben-Tzvi’s tail will take
time. With only two hyper-redundant
tails, the process to getting them on exist-
ing bipedal and quadrupedal robots is not
too far down the road. First, Ben-Tzvi will
“Being able to generate multiple progres- build a quadruped robot of his own to field
sive shapes gives us the ability to increase
test the maneuvering and stability prop-
the range of minimum and maximum
erties of the tail, and using data gathered
force and moments that can be generated
from those experiments, he and his team
by the tail,” said Ben-Tzvi. “For a pendu-
will discover the best sizes and shapes of
lum-like tail the center of mass follows a
tails to fit different robots, and where they
circular trajectory on a circular arc, but
need to be placed within the structure to
the mode shapes on a flexible tail means
achieve their desired effect.
MOMENTUM
SUMMER 2018
PAGE 15