Distributed manipulation with passive air flow

Abstract

Distributed manipulation systems induce motions on objects through the application of forces at many points of contact. Current forms of distributed manipulation include multiple mobile robots, vibrating plates, actively controlled arrays of air jets, and planar micro and macro-mechanical arrays of actuators. The paper presents a form of distributed manipulation using passive air flow fields, which has been experimentally demonstrated. Rather than directly actuating the flow at each point, potential flow assumptions allow a small number of simple point-generated fields to combine to form complex manipulation fields. The paper presents a methodology for efficiently computing equilibria of objects manipulated by arbitrary combinations of radially symmetric fields (such as potential flow fields).