U.S. Army CCDC Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, Maryland, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2021 Apr 26;16(4):e0249066. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249066. eCollection 2021.
This paper explores whether artificial ground-mobile systems exhibit a consistent regularity of relation among mass, power, and speed, similar to that which exists for biological organisms. To this end, we investigate an empirical allometric formula proposed in the 1980s for estimating the mechanical power expended by an organism of a given mass to move at a given speed, applicable over several orders of magnitude of mass, for a broad range of species, to determine if a comparable regularity applies to a range of vehicles. We show empirically that not only does a similar regularity apply to a wide variety of mobile systems; moreover, the formula is essentially the same, describing organisms and systems ranging from a roach (1 g) to a battle tank (35,000 kg). We also show that for very heavy vehicles (35,000-100,000,000 kg), the formula takes a qualitatively different form. These findings point to a fundamental similarity between biological and artificial locomotion that transcends great differences in morphology, mechanisms, materials, and behaviors. To illustrate the utility of this allometric relation, we investigate the significant extent to which ground robotic systems exhibit a higher cost of transport than either organisms or conventional vehicles, and discuss ways to overcome inefficiencies.
本文探讨了人造地面移动系统是否表现出与生物有机体相似的质量、功率和速度之间的一致关系规律。为此，我们研究了 20 世纪 80 年代提出的一种经验性的比例公式，用于估计给定质量的生物体以给定速度移动所消耗的机械功率，该公式适用于多个数量级的质量范围和广泛的物种，以确定类似的规律是否适用于一系列车辆。我们从经验上证明，不仅各种移动系统都适用类似的规律；而且，该公式本质上是相同的，它描述了从蟑螂（1 克）到主战坦克（35000 千克）等各种生物体和系统。我们还表明，对于非常重的车辆（35000-100000000 千克），该公式采用了一种本质上不同的形式。这些发现表明，生物和人工运动之间存在一种基本的相似性，这种相似性超越了形态、机制、材料和行为方面的巨大差异。为了说明这种比例关系的实用性，我们研究了地面机器人系统比生物体或传统车辆表现出更高的运输成本的显著程度，并讨论了克服效率低下的方法。
