The objective of this thrust is threefold: (1) we seek to understand the nonlinear dynamic characteristics of human tremor such as Parkinson’s disease and develop robotic devices for mitigating tremor; (2) we examine how human exposure to high level of vibrations causes injury and then design low cost and energy-efficient devices for protecting humans from vibration hazards; (3) we seek to understand the fundamentals of human motion to quantify intention for use in assistive exoskeletons.

The aim of this thrust is to investigate how we can use mobile robots for flow-induced vibration control and damage inspection of crucial structures such as overhead power lines, suspension bridges, or gas pipes.  Our focus here is to understand the nonlinear dynamic interactions between the flow, structure, and robotic device and construct integrated mathematical and design frameworks for achieving multi-functional tasks such as vibration control, energy harvesting, and structural health monitoring.

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The goal of this thrust is to design, model, and test intelligent sandwich and/or nonlinear metamaterial systems and structures for vibration control and/ or energy harvesting.  Our focus is to exploit the benefits of nonlinear dynamic characteristics such as internal/parametric resonances, hardening, softening, and chaos to provide broadband energy harvesting and vibration control.

This work is a collaborative effort with the Smart and Sustainable Automation Research Lab at UofM. The aim here is to design for or with nonlinearities for improving precision and speed in advanced manufacturing. Current projects include (1) friction isolator for mitigating friction-induced vibration in nanopositioning stages; and (2) nonlinear vibration isolation in ultra-precision manufacturing machines.