Events and Seminars

Upcoming Events
April 5, 2013: Biomechanics Seminar
Vytas SunSpiral, NASA Ames Research Center: 3.30PM
Location: 2063 Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
Click here to view / download the flier.
Dynamic Tensegrities: Foundation for Motion and Thought . There is a fundamental connection between understanding our daily human experience and understanding how we move. Our brains exist to coordinate motion, so if we wish to understand how we think, feel, and relate to others, we should start by understanding how we move. The control of human and robotic motion is intimately tied to the structure that is being moved, and emerging theories of vertebrate physiology are overturning the traditional bone-centric model of the body in favor of a fascia-centric model where the primary load paths are in the continuous tension network of the soft-tissue. Tensegrity structures distribute forces globally through a continuous tension network while their compression elements do not touch or pass compressive loads to each other. They have many physical properties, such as high strength to weight and multi-path force distribution, which make them ideally suited for robust motion through dynamic natural settings, yet pose new challenges for controls.

This talk will discuss the unique properties of tensegrity structures and how they appear to be a foundational part of our bodies and how we move. Challenges in controlling tensegrities will be discussed, including thoughts on how they may be especially appropriate for neurologically inspired Central Pattern Generator (CPG) based oscillatory control networks, enabling a natural coupling from controller to structure to environment. The talk will include an overview of current research into dynamic tensegrity structures, both physical robots and physics based simulations, focusing on robust mobility.

 

Past Events
March 1, 2013: CiBER-IGERT Seminar Series, co-hosted by the Biomechanics Seminar Series
J. Sean Humbert, University of Maryland: 3:30pm
Location: 4110 Valley Life Sciences Building, UC Berkeley
Click here to view / download the flier.
Sensorimotor Integration and Control at Insect Scales. Control architectures for nature’s small, agile flyers exhibit substantial differences from their engineered counterparts. For instance, latency is minimized by neurons that spatially weight across non-orthogonal arrays of sensors as opposed to traditional temporal filtering of small numbers of orthogonally arranged sensors to achieve signal to noise improvements. In this talk I will discuss several of these distinctions in the context of distillable solutions for small-scale engineered systems including: directionality and observability properties of insect sensory structures such as the compound eye; analysis of high speed videography of insects in free flight and reduced order models of flapping flight dynamics to understand controllability properties; implications for efficient coupling of sensing and actuation; and hardware implementations and demonstrations of insect-inspired sensorimotor architectures.

 
Feb. 20, 2013: CiBER-IGERT Seminar Series, co-hosted by the EECS ColloquiumSangbae Kim, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: 4:00pm [Refreshments at 3:30pm]Location: 306 Soda Hall (HP Auditorium), UC BerkeleyClick hereto view / download the flier.Toward highly dynamic locomotion : actuation, structure and control of the MIT cheetah robot. Robot designers are increasingly searching for ideas from biology. The talk will introduce such bio-inspired robots that embody the hypothesized principles from the insights obtained by animal studies. Through these examples, the intricate processes of design principle extraction will be discussed. Current research in the MIT biomimetics lab is centered on the development of a cheetah-inspired running robot. Three major associated research thrusts are optimum actuator design, biotensegrity structure design, and the impluse-based control architecture for stable galloping control. Each research component is guided by biomechanics of runners such as dogs and cheetahs capable of the fast traverse on rough and unstructured terrains.

 
Nov. 8, 2012: CiBER-IGERT Seminar SeriesJohn O. Dabiri, Caltech UniversityTime: 4:00pmLocation: 2040 Valley Life Sciences Building, UC BerkeleyClick hereto view / download the flier.
May 5, 2008: Monthly Seminar Series
Helen Greiner,
iRobot Corp.Click here for more information.
April 15, 2008: CiBER Industry Day
Gecko ResearchClick here for more information, photos and presentations.
March 3, 2008: Monthly Seminar Series
Marc Raibert,
Boston Dynamics, Inc.Click here for more information.

Seminars

Seminar in Biomechanics

Integrative Biology (INTEGBI) 232 [2 units]

Course Format: Two hours of seminar per week.
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor.
Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit.
Grading option: Must be taken on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis.
Description: Presentation, discussion, and critique of current literature in scientific research and current topics in comparative biomechanics which include solid and fluid mechanics, locomotion, and energetics.
(F,SP)


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