Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Finite Element Analysis And Biological Growth Realization Using Robot Swarms, Cody W. Dorbin, Adrian Buganza-Tepole

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Our understanding of growth and remodeling of biological systems has increased in the past two decades; however, this knowledge has not yet been used in human-designed systems or engineering applications. This project studies designing and building a network of robots that mimics the biological behavior of growth driven by cell-cell communication and control networks. The objective of this research is to harness the principles that govern tissue adaptation and morphogenesis, where peer-to-peer local communication determines global properties, to create human-made engineering systems with life-like capabilities. We used Arduino microcontrollers to control an individual robot in an expandable 3d-printed cuboid shell. …