apid prototyping technology. SDM addresses many limitations of traditional manufacturing and assembly by enabling the in situ fabrication of mechanisms with complex geometry and heterogeneous materials. Design and fabrication of layered and heterogeneous materials (also called Functionally Graded Materials - FGMs) has recently been a focus of research. FGMs enable control of local variations of biomimetic components by selectively depositing soft and hard materials. To produce biologically inspired components of biomimetic/mechanical properties, a bridge between biological findings and SDM design specifications was required.

The first demand for SDM is to characterize biological structures and translate the characteristics into quantitative specifications for mobile robots. The second requirement is to model SDM material behavior to facilitate component design to meet these specifications. To address these requirements experiments were conducted on a hind leg of Blaberus discoidalis and described its response to both step displacement inputs and sinusoidal displacement excitations. Next, a test was carried out on one of the materials used in SDM, a soft polyurethane polymer largely used as joint material in manufacture, and fit the results to standard viscoelastic (pliable yet sturdy) materials and models. Comparison and understanding of the mapping between these two studies enable us to begin to design and manufacture legs similar to those found in biology.

The Study

The authors of "Material Modeling for Shape Deposition Manufacturing of Biomimetic Components," are Xiaorong Xu, Wendy Cheng, Mark R. Cutkosky and Motohide Hatanaka from Stanford University, and Daniel Dudek and Robert J. Full at the University of California at Berkley, Department of Integrative Biology, Berkeley, CA. The authors are presenting their work at "The Power of Comparative Physiology: Evolution, Integration and Application" meeting, sponsored by the American P
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Contact: Donna Krupa
djkrupa1@aol.com
703-967-2751
American Physiological Society
26-Aug-2002

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