Carsten Behn – författare

Das zentrale Objekt der Theorie der wurmartigen Fortbewegung ist ein mechanisches System in Form einer Kette von Massenpunkten, die ihre unidirektionale Beweglichkeit mittels idealer Spikes erhalten. Davon ausgehend werden Kinematik, Dynamik und Steuerung derartiger Systeme untersucht. Bei den Steuerungsaufgaben stehen adaptive Regler im Vordergrund, da etwa Systemparameter und externe Parameter mit Unsicherheiten behaftet sind. Für Haft- und Gleitreibung werden verschiedene Modelle angegeben und diskutiert, die sogenanntes Stick-Slip-Verhalten realisieren.

The book in hand grew out of the authors'' current research and their long-continued experience in teaching mathematics and mechanics. In a wide sense, it aims at mathematical modeling of mechanical objects and their exploitation. This is done in a bit unconventional way by concentrating on the special object class worm-like locomotion systems and in proceeding with no use of recent sophisticated mathematical tools which most likely cannot be handled by freshmen in engineering or mathematics. Nevertheless, this does not harm the stringent line the physical object to the analytical interpretation of the final mathematical model. The basic model spiked worm in a straight line enables the authors to come up with a fairly self-contained theory which then allows one to study effects of friction and control. The considered system class has its importance in practice (motion in narrow canals, e.g.), but this book is not with an orientation to design and application, the theory developed here should rather be seen as a contribution to bionics.

.. Starting with the research of G. Bogelsack in the 1970s, the analysis of biological locomotion andmanipulation systemsandtheirtechnical realizationhas beenan- portant research eld within the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Ilmenau University of Technology. In 1996, the German Research Foundation (DFG) funded the Innovation College "Motion Systems" at the University of Jena in a coope- tion with engineers at the Ilmenau University of Technology. Thus, research was able to be intensi ed and extended. Of course, the whole spectrum of biologically inspired systems is much too wide, so the analysis was still focused on locomotion and manipulation systems. At this stage J. Steigenberger from the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural S- ences at the Ilmenau University of Technology contributed important studies of worm-like locomotion systems with much dedication and technical competence. Moreover, he conceived and carried out a lecture series entitled "Mathematical Basics for Locomotion Systems", which was based on his evaluation of national and international research developments in this eld. I. Zeidis and K.Zimmermann contributed many publications on the mechanics of worm-like locomotion systems based on continuum and rigid-body models as well as asymptotic methods. Since 2004 the German Research Foundation has supported a series of projects led by K. Zimmermann dedicated to biologically inspired robotics. In addition to these activities, the Department of Technical Mechanics and the Department of Computer Application in Mechanical Engineering (M. Weiss) together with masters and doctoral students started the development of mobile robots for the RoboCup Small-Size League in 1998.