Modeling and analysis of ciliary micro-hopping locomotion actuated by an eccentric motor in a microgravity

This paper presents the modeling and analysis of ciliary micro-hopping locomotion actuated by an eccentric motor, for enabling mobile robots to explore asteroids. Under the proposed system, elastic cilia are attached to the surface of the robot; this arrangement should enable the robot to have better mobility in a microgravity environment. However, in the development of the ciliary micro-hopping mechanism theoretical modeling and analysis of the interactive mechanics between the cilia and the environment pose technical challenges that need to be addressed. In this paper, we present the dynamics modeling of the ciliary micro-hopping locomotion actuated by an eccentric motor, along with its experimental validations and numerical simulations. The results of this study contribute to the design optimization of both the cilia mechanism and the motor control scheme.