When: 12.1.2022 at 15:00
Where: zoom
Also: Dan Kahn Building, room 217, Technion
Abstract: It seems that animals are very good at learning how to move, and how to recover the ability to move after injury. Roboticists have attempted to imbue the same capabilities in robots with only moderate success. Through pursuing a deeper understanding of the underlying mathematics and physics of locomotion, I present the idea of using limit cycle oscillators as the key mathematical object to consider. Using tools developed for modeling the oscillators that appear in biological locomotion and combining them with insights from geometric mechanics, we created robots that can learn how to move with an optimization that lasts only a few dozens of cycles. The talk will present these ideas at a high level, primarily focusing on experimental results from animals, robots, and simulated robots.
You can watch the seminar here