GW Professor Designs Robotic Foreflipper That Mimics Mammal’s Movement, Hoping it Will Aid Mechanical Innovation in Intelligence Community
At a maximum speed of 25 miles per hour, sea lions may not be the fastest-swimming mammal in the sea. But they are unrivaled when it comes to stealth—their signature clap-and-glide flipper motion propels them through water and leaves virtually no wake.
Megan Leftwich, a George Washington University professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, took notice of this anomaly during a visit to the Smithsonian National Zoo with her children in 2013. While other mammals use their tails or additional fins to help them swim, leaving wakes, sea lions flip and spin without the added help, and without the wake. Dr. Leftwich wondered how they did it and, being an engineer, she speculated whether researchers could replicate the motion.
“Sea lions swim with their foreflippers, or front flippers, rather than their tail and their propulsive motion is barely detectable,” Dr. Leftwich said. “What we’re trying to do is apply this mechanism to man-made objects. Can we build an underwater vehicle that can go undetected?”
To answer this question, Dr. Leftwich and her team videotaped sea lions swimming at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo to capture the foreflipper’s movement frame by frame and track points on their “arms” to mathematically describe the flapping motion. They used the mathematical description to design a plastic robotic arm that mimics a sea lion’s shoulder, elbow and wrist joints.
Then, Dr. Leftwich 3-D scanned and printed a sea lion foreflipper to cover the “arm” with a silicone version of the skin to study the possible effect wrinkles and hairs have on the drag when swimming. These studies were conducted in GW’s Science and Engineering Hall using flow diagnostic techniques to chart the fluid’s movement and the forces it takes for a sea lion to move its foreflipper.
Dr. Leftwich chronicled her research in a paper published last month in the Journal of Aero Aqua Bio-mechanisms. Her next step is to bring the robotic foreflipper to SLEWTHS (Science, Learning and Education With The Help of Sea Lions), a teaching aquarium in California, to test her experiment directly with animals in their natural habitat.
“Observational studies like these are the first step in a research program that will lead to deep understanding of this unique swimming paradigm,” Dr. Leftwich said. “Now that we’ve done the preliminary studies at the National Zoo, we need to test the theories we’ve developed on foreflippers in a lab involving scientifically trained sea lions.”
Read more: Swimming Without a Trace—Building a Machine to Mimic What Sea Lions Naturally Do
The Latest on: Mechanical Innovation
via Google News
The Latest on: Mchanical Innovation
- 3rd Biennial International Conference on Future Learning Aspects of Mechanical Engineering (FLAME-2022) commences at Amityon August 5, 2022 at 5:30 am
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Amity School of Engineering and Technology (ASET), Amity University Uttar Pradesh, has organized the 3rd Biennial International Conference on Future Learning ...
- Havells launches its innovative Crabtree Signia switches in Kochi; stock slips ~1.5%on August 5, 2022 at 1:31 am
Customers can select from smart and mechanical switches in the same design and match them to the décor of their homes.
- Designers Australia Awards 2022 celebrate the innovation of Australian designon August 4, 2022 at 6:30 am
The Design Institute of Australia celebrates the achievements of the countrys creative community in its annual awards, which recognise not only the products of good design but the people, processes ...
- ‘Innovation and leadership in the energy field’on August 3, 2022 at 11:45 am
General Atomics is a U.S. energy and defense corporation headquartered in San Diego. It produces a series of unmanned aircraft and provides electro-optical, radar, signals intelligence and automated ...
- Digital Twins Are the Future, Here Are 5 Ways to Keep Them Secure While Manufacturing Innovationon August 3, 2022 at 7:30 am
Digital twin usage is expected to increase in use over the years, but they do have their security risks. Follow these five security practices for optimal safety.
- Next-Step for Cleaning Robot Innovationon August 3, 2022 at 6:16 am
Avidbots and Maplesoft collaboration produces innovation to meet growing demand for autonomous commercial cleaning systems.
- Mechanical Sewing Machine Market Size, Status, Global Outlook 2022 To 2028 – Shang Gong Group, Singer, Toyota, Gemsy, Jaguaron July 28, 2022 at 10:18 pm
The Mechanical Sewing Machine market reports provide a detailed analysis of area market expansion, competitiveness, global and regional market size, and growth analysis. It also offers recent ...
- Innovative “Nano-Robot” Built Entirely From DNA To Explore Microscopic Biological Processeson July 28, 2022 at 2:00 am
Constructing a tiny robot out of DNA and using it to study cell processes invisible to the naked eye... Although it certainly sounds like science fiction, it is in fact the subject of serious research ...
- Putting the spotlight on sustainable packaging innovationon July 25, 2022 at 9:00 pm
Another edition of the Packaging Innovation Awards is underway. This competition is an opportunity to recognize the creative minds working to bring sustainable packaging to market. I hope shining a ...
- Mechanical Engineers in Florida Earn a Median $79,086, 2nd Worst in U.S.on July 25, 2022 at 8:13 pm
Experts of all stripes agree that the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are critical to the U.S. economy. A recent study estimated that STEM supports 67% of jobs in ...
via Bing News