Design and Characterization of a Robotic Cyber-Physical System for Real-Time Flow-Device Experiments

This paper presents the design and the experimental characterization of a Cyber-Physical System tailored for research in fundamental and applied fluid mechanics (fluid-structure interaction problems), biomechanics (biolocomotion), and civil engineering (wind- or flow-structure interactions). The design is aimed at ideally controlling the six degrees of freedom of the manipulated object, being versatile to different experimental scenarios, and usable in real-time and closed-loop if manipulating an active object. Mechanical design robustness is examined through an experiment emphasizing the crucial constraint of robot rigidity. Subsequently, the robotic Cyber-Physical System kinematic and dynamic capabilities are validated, demonstrating compliance to specifications, along with considerations regarding acceleration saturation. A third experiment analyzes the robot end-effector natural frequencies, yielding frequency ranges that should not be excited in future experiments. Findings contribute to providing directions for refining the mechanical design, synthesizing control strategies, and enhancing the device robustness and performance in various flow-device interaction scenarios.