Engineering Informatics Education with Biologically Inspired Robots

The design of robotic systems is a multidisciplinary effort requiring input from engineers and scientist in a variety of fields. Throughout the design process, numerous engineering models are developed to describe the various subsystems that make up a robotic device. We will present a biologically inspired robotic snake as a case study to demonstrate the typical engineering models that comprise a robotic system. Increasingly, simulation tools are being integrated early in the design flow to verify the operation of both individual subsystems and interconnections of multiple subsystems. Co-simulation often leads to difficulty because separate subsystems are often designed in incomparable software packages.