报告内容摘要

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The current studies of fish-like aquatic propulsion are quite limited in their ability to control for physical determinates such as body shape, kinetic motions, flexural stiffness, skin surface scale and Mucus properties etc. Keeping one of these determinates constant while altering others in a controllable manner is impossible for the swimming live fishes. Bio-inspired robotic models offered the ability to manipulate and control individual physical determinate that affect the aquatic propulsive performance.

In collaboration with a number of colleagues at Harvard University, we have developed a bio-inspired robotics as well as multi-material prototypes to experimentally investigate several new topics of aquatic propulsion. A key aspect of our experimental setup is that the bio-inspired robotics and multi-material prototypes are self-propelled (thus to satisfy Newtonian equation of balance) and can swim against the flow in the lab water tank. While self-propelled swimming, measurement of speed, external forces and torques, internal power consumptions, cost-of-transport (COT) of the bio-inspired robot and the multi-material prototypes are synchronized with the motion program and high-speed video of the wake flow.

Based on the experimental setup, we mainly investigated three topics: (1) understanding hydrodynamics of undulatory body, dorsal, anal and caudal fin locomotion in fishes using “self-propelled” robotic device. (2) the hydrodynamic effect of a synthetic, flexible fish (Mako shark, Isurus oxyrinchus) skin prototype which is fabricated by using the state-to-art multi-material 3D printing, and (3) hydrodynamic swimming performance of a fish skin mucus inspired engineering lubricant coated prototype, which has micro-nano textured solid substrate to hold high-viscosity slippery liquid on the top. Selected results from these studies will be discussed in detail to illustrate the utility of bio-inspired robotics and multi-material prototypes for revealing novel features of the aquatic propulsion.

 

报告人简历

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Li Wen received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2005, and the Ph.D. degree from the School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beihang University, Beijing, China, in 2011. From May 2011 to July 2013, he was a Postdoctoral fellow in Lauder Laboratory, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA. He started his individual academic career as an “extinguished 100” associate professor at Beihang University from September, 2013. He was a visiting professor at Harvard University from December, 2013 to February, 2014.

His current research interests mainly include bio-inspired robotics, soft robotics, and comparative biomechanics. He has published more than 30 academic papers. Recently, his research was featured by Nature as “research highlights”, and also appeared as the cover article of the Journal of Experimental biology. His work was also reported by Science, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Nature World News, Discover Magazine, Popular Mechanics, Physics Org, and the Telegraph etc. In addition, Harvard University designated his work of the multiple material 3D printed synthetic shark skin as “Biomimetic breakthrough”.

Li Wen served as the Session Chairs for several academic conferences, including the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) and International conference of Offshore and Polar Engineering (ISOPE) etc. He was the recipient of the Best Student Paper Award from ISOPE in 2010, outstanding PhD thesis award by Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society, SICB (Society of Integrative Orgasmic Biology) Conference award by National Science Foundation, USA. He is an active reviewer for more than 10 academic journals including The Journal of Experimental Biology, Journal of Royal Society Interface, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, and Bioinspiration Biomimetics etc. He is also a member of IEEE and SICB.