Mathematics of Sea Slug Movement Points to Future Robots
American Physical Society (APS)Mathematician Shankar Venkataramani’s research group recently discovered a lot of new, powerful geometries involved in frilly surfaces, which he will describe at the 2019 APS March Meeting. For mathematicians, frilly is plain language for an inflected nonsmooth surface -- one that changes the direction in which it bends, such as with kale or coral. Venkataramani’s group developed the mathematics to describe these surfaces, and the combination of new geometry insights and age-old slugs might just be the right combination for a new generation of flexible, energy-efficient soft-bodied robots.