The Office of Naval Research’s Bio-robotics Program in legged robotics led to DARPA’s Big Dog robot.
ONR’s Bio-mimetic Robotics Program has a primary focus on bio-inspired autonomous undersea vehicles. Neuroscience research into motor control circuit controlling movement patterns led to nonlinear physics models of coupled neural oscillators encoding command sequences in phase. Nonlinear controller was built in analog VLSI and demonstrated to produce precise adaptive synchronization of a six-foil underwater vehicle.
Analysis of fluid dynamics of fly wing and fish fins led to new principles for high-lift propulsion due to dynamic stall mechanisms. High-lift pitching and heaving foils developed at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center have been able to capture this efficient propulsion on a prototype underwater vehicle. This vehicle is quiet, highly maneuverable and capable of operating for weeks with current battery technology. Research into muscle-like actuators, bio-sonar and flow sensors has also been supported.
The technology behind the Bio-mimetic Robotics program are bio-inspired autonomous undersea vehicles that use the principles of animal locomotion and neural control, and bioinspired sensing that demonstrate improvements in stealth, efficiency, maneuverability, and mission duration over existing engineering technologies.
These new bio-mimetic technologies will offer future Warfighters persistent, long duration missions by highly maneuverable vehicles capable of positioning sensor arrays.