Department of Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Matteo Aureli recently received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, or NSF, were recently awarded to assistant professors in the College of Engineering. According to the NSF website, CAREER awards are a "foundation-wide activity that offers the NSF's most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty that have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education, and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization."
Aureli's research seeks to create bioinspired underwater robots equipped with actively morphing fins.
"The research work is inspired by marine creatures that continuously change their fin shape and stiffness to achieve optimal energy advantages for different swimming regimes," Aureli said.
The project will study the role of active fin stiffness and shape control for the purpose of enhanced underwater propulsion. Understanding this new swimming concept will enable the development of the next generation of underwater robots tasked with missions of extended duration and autonomy. According to Aureli, the robots could be used for scientific exploration, ecological conservation of water bodies such as Lake Tahoe and Pyramid Lake, underwater resource prospecting and mapping, along with surveillance and stealth operations for defense purposes.
The research will tackle outstanding problems in dynamical systems theory and establish models for self-sensing and feedback control of actively morphing artificial fins. These models, supported by simulations and experiments, will be translated and implemented into swimming robots to study bioinspired locomotion and test hypotheses on the effectiveness of active morphing.
"This will also advance current technology in underwater robotic propulsion by exploiting the transformative concepts of active stiffness and shape morphing. The project will also support university-level and K-12 STEM education in the state of Nevada and beyond," Aureli said.
