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Tensegrity and Its Application

The document discusses tensegrity, a structural principle where shape is guaranteed by tension rather than compression. Tensegrity provides structures the ability to resist distortion when stressed. Research has found that living cells exhibit behaviors consistent with the tensegrity model. The document also discusses developing tensegrity robots with self-repair and adaptation capabilities modeled after living systems.

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13 views

Tensegrity and Its Application

The document discusses tensegrity, a structural principle where shape is guaranteed by tension rather than compression. Tensegrity provides structures the ability to resist distortion when stressed. Research has found that living cells exhibit behaviors consistent with the tensegrity model. The document also discusses developing tensegrity robots with self-repair and adaptation capabilities modeled after living systems.

Uploaded by

denis1808scribd
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Tensegrity and Its Application

Tensegrity
What is tensegrity? "The word 'tensegrity' is an invention: a contraction of 'tensional integrity. Tensegrity describes a structuralrelationship principle in which structural shape is guaranteed by the finitely closed, comprehensively continuous, tensional behaviors of the system and not by the discontinuous and exclusively local compressional member behaviors. Tensegrity provides the ability to yield increasingly without ultimately breaking or coming asunder"

- Richard Buckminster Fuller (exerpt from Synergetics, p. 372.)

Needle Tower

Living Cells Act Consistently With Tensegrity Model A research team from the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School and Boston University has developed new measurement technologies confirming that living cells exhibit behavior consistent with the hypothesis known as the "tensegrity" model. Tensegrity architecture provides a structure, such as a living cell, with the ability to resist distortion of shape when a mechanical stress is applied to it. The findings appear in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Developmental Nervous Systems for Tensegrity Robots

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We are building robots and trying to equip them with capabilities that living systems have, but which robots have not previously had. These include self-repair, self-reproduction, energy self-sufficiency, growing bodies, and control adaptation to variable body morphology. In this work we demand a minimal competence from the robots, but that competence is not the primary goal the primary goal is the exploration of the capabilities that all living systems have, but which robots have not previously had. We are building large scale computational experiments to explore aspects of living systems that can not at this time be directly approached in hardware. These include self-organization of pre-biotic chemistry, self-organization of very simple neural systems in very primitive creatures, self-organization of physical structures based on tensegrity, and the evolution of physical attributes of creatures in complex environments.

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