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Muhao-Chen / Tensegrity_Finite_Element_Method_TsgFEM

Tensegrity_Finite_Element_Method(TsgFEM)
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Inquiries about the CTS function #4

Open LatteRivaLin opened 2 years ago

LatteRivaLin commented 2 years ago

Hello, thank you very much for your open source programs, I recently noticed that you research group members have done excellent work on CTS, I have great interest in such structures, thank you again for your contributions, do you plan to update CTS- related MATLAB functions into the library recently?

Muhao-Chen commented 2 years ago

Thanks for your kind words and encouragement!

Yes, we plan to open-source clustered tensegrity structures (CTS) codes recently as well, and we are working on the instructions, user guide, and making user-friendly examples. Plus, we will also upload our analysis tool on tensegrity with any arbitrary shape of rigid bodies.

The motivation is that, as you may know, CTS can significantly reduce the number of actuators and sensors, offering scalable actuation energy, simplifying the assembly process, especially for soft robots and large-span deployable structures. And for many engineering structures, we must include rigid bodies, i.e., the deck of the bridges, the roof of the shelters, the shell of cable domes, and the shield of space structures.

We would like to develop and offer more and more tools to help engineers design more efficient structures. If you have any problems you want to discuss in your tensegrity study, feel free to contact me. And thank you so much for your interest!

LatteRivaLin commented 2 years ago

This is awesome! The second update you mentioned is also crucial as many novel tensegrity structures and mechanisms inevitably contain shapes other than pure columns.

In addition, I would like to ask you about the general idea of implementing shape control in Matlab programs. Does this closed-loop control process require Simulink? The reason for asking this question is that my colleagues and I plan to design a subroutine with an interactive control interface based on the existing program, for example, users may be able to drag the manipulating bar to make a tensegrity spine bend or a Superball robot stretch, we think these pending features will provide a great convenience for prototyping and simulation.

Previously, our team has been developing tensegrity structures based on python scripts and Adams, but experience has shown that such commercial software cannot describe the properties of tensegrity structures well. Even if we have completed the definition of tension that considers slack, when we need to study the CTS structure, Adams fails to handle this kind of problem at all, NTRTsim can't solve this problem either and it hasn't been maintained for a long time. I am very excited about the program developed by your team, I am very happy and looking forward to participating in the upgrade of this project!

Muhao-Chen commented 2 years ago

Thanks for your reply!

The shape control we developed includes nonlinear and linear model-based control and data-based control. We don't have Simulink in our codes, but surely you can integrate Simulink to implement the shape control. An interactive control interface sounds really a cool project. The idea you have would definitely help users study the tensegrity robots more easily. Let me know if I can help with anything.

Yes, and also, Ansys and Abaqus cannot do the clustering strategy for statics and dynamic studies. You are right, commercial packages have a lot of limitations, and we have to look into the insight of each member and let our ideas drive the research path instead of accommodating the tools. Sounds excellent; please let me know anything I can help with. I believe we can collaborate on various cool ideas. Thank you!