Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 2 Summer 2018 | Page 14

into the model to create movement.
“The tail is sitting on a six-axis force
sensor that measures the forces and move-
ments and sends that data to the computer
where it is applied to a virtual prototype to
see how the model affects stabilization and
movement,” said Ben-Tzvi. “The modeling
is very good at finding the most stable
point, allowing us to scale the model and
place different masses in different loca-
tions along the tail prototype to achieve
the desired motion.”
Other researchers have looked at robotic
tails that are non-flexible, and only do
a single function. Ben-Tzvi said the tail
needs to be more robust and flexible, be-
MOMENTUM
SUMMER 2018
ing able to perform a variety of functions
to justify incorporating it into a complex,
high-performance mechanism.
“We looked to nature to see how animals
used their tails and how their tails are
structured,” said Ben-Tzvi. “What we
saw was a continuous deformation and
hyper-redundant structure, so we’ve been
inspired by that, and the research we’ve
done has been largely establishing the
field of hyper-redundant robotic tails. We
are pioneering – exploring the field and
establishing it so that we have a baseline
for coupled dynamic analysis of legged
robots with tails onboard.”
After spending a lot of time modeling
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