Event Date
Abstract
Soft robots introduce new opportunities for design and control approaches that take advantage of a robot's internal mechanics to perform a task more robustly and efficiently. Underwater swimming is particularly interesting in that the robot's locomotion performance depends not only on the robot itself but also on the complex interactions between the fluid and the robot's body. We are inspired by the biological salp, a type of underwater jelly, and how salps connected in colonies can produce higher speed, agility, or cost of transport than a single unit, depending on the jet coordination and physical arrangement. In this talk, I will discuss our recent forays into underwater robot design in the SALP robot, and how the platform has enabled us to explore the effect of robot-fluid interactions in multi-robot coordination.
Bio
Cynthia Sung is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM) and a member of the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception (GRASP) lab at the University of Pennsylvania. She received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2016 and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University in 2011. Her research interests are computational methods for robot co-design, with a particular focus on origami-inspired and compliant robots. She is the recipient of a 2024 ARO Early Career Award, 2023 ONR Young Investigator award, and a 2019 NSF CAREER award.