112 research outputs found

    Physical sketching tools and techniques for customized sensate surfaces

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    Sensate surfaces are a promising avenue for enhancing human interaction with digital systems due to their inherent intuitiveness and natural user interface. Recent technological advancements have enabled sensate surfaces to surpass the constraints of conventional touchscreens by integrating them into everyday objects, creating interactive interfaces that can detect various inputs such as touch, pressure, and gestures. This allows for more natural and intuitive control of digital systems. However, prototyping interactive surfaces that are customized to users' requirements using conventional techniques remains technically challenging due to limitations in accommodating complex geometric shapes and varying sizes. Furthermore, it is crucial to consider the context in which customized surfaces are utilized, as relocating them to fabrication labs may lead to the loss of their original design context. Additionally, prototyping high-resolution sensate surfaces presents challenges due to the complex signal processing requirements involved. This thesis investigates the design and fabrication of customized sensate surfaces that meet the diverse requirements of different users and contexts. The research aims to develop novel tools and techniques that overcome the technical limitations of current methods and enable the creation of sensate surfaces that enhance human interaction with digital systems.Sensorische Oberflächen sind aufgrund ihrer inhärenten Intuitivität und natürlichen Benutzeroberfläche ein vielversprechender Ansatz, um die menschliche Interaktionmit digitalen Systemen zu verbessern. Die jüngsten technologischen Fortschritte haben es ermöglicht, dass sensorische Oberflächen die Beschränkungen herkömmlicher Touchscreens überwinden, indem sie in Alltagsgegenstände integriert werden und interaktive Schnittstellen schaffen, die diverse Eingaben wie Berührung, Druck, oder Gesten erkennen können. Dies ermöglicht eine natürlichere und intuitivere Steuerung von digitalen Systemen. Das Prototyping interaktiver Oberflächen, die mit herkömmlichen Techniken an die Bedürfnisse der Nutzer angepasst werden, bleibt jedoch eine technische Herausforderung, da komplexe geometrische Formen und variierende Größen nur begrenzt berücksichtigt werden können. Darüber hinaus ist es von entscheidender Bedeutung, den Kontext, in dem diese individuell angepassten Oberflächen verwendet werden, zu berücksichtigen, da eine Verlagerung in Fabrikations-Laboratorien zum Verlust ihres ursprünglichen Designkontextes führen kann. Zudem stellt das Prototyping hochauflösender sensorischer Oberflächen aufgrund der komplexen Anforderungen an die Signalverarbeitung eine Herausforderung dar. Diese Arbeit erforscht dasDesign und die Fabrikation individuell angepasster sensorischer Oberflächen, die den diversen Anforderungen unterschiedlicher Nutzer und Kontexte gerecht werden. Die Forschung zielt darauf ab, neuartigeWerkzeuge und Techniken zu entwickeln, die die technischen Beschränkungen derzeitigerMethoden überwinden und die Erstellung von sensorischen Oberflächen ermöglichen, die die menschliche Interaktion mit digitalen Systemen verbessern

    Design, Actuation, and Functionalization of Untethered Soft Magnetic Robots with Life-Like Motions: A Review

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    Soft robots have demonstrated superior flexibility and functionality than conventional rigid robots. These versatile devices can respond to a wide range of external stimuli (including light, magnetic field, heat, electric field, etc.), and can perform sophisticated tasks. Notably, soft magnetic robots exhibit unparalleled advantages among numerous soft robots (such as untethered control, rapid response, and high safety), and have made remarkable progress in small-scale manipulation tasks and biomedical applications. Despite the promising potential, soft magnetic robots are still in their infancy and require significant advancements in terms of fabrication, design principles, and functional development to be viable for real-world applications. Recent progress shows that bionics can serve as an effective tool for developing soft robots. In light of this, the review is presented with two main goals: (i) exploring how innovative bioinspired strategies can revolutionize the design and actuation of soft magnetic robots to realize various life-like motions; (ii) examining how these bionic systems could benefit practical applications in small-scale solid/liquid manipulation and therapeutic/diagnostic-related biomedical fields

    Legged Robots for Object Manipulation: A Review

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    Legged robots can have a unique role in manipulating objects in dynamic, human-centric, or otherwise inaccessible environments. Although most legged robotics research to date typically focuses on traversing these challenging environments, many legged platform demonstrations have also included "moving an object" as a way of doing tangible work. Legged robots can be designed to manipulate a particular type of object (e.g., a cardboard box, a soccer ball, or a larger piece of furniture), by themselves or collaboratively. The objective of this review is to collect and learn from these examples, to both organize the work done so far in the community and highlight interesting open avenues for future work. This review categorizes existing works into four main manipulation methods: object interactions without grasping, manipulation with walking legs, dedicated non-locomotive arms, and legged teams. Each method has different design and autonomy features, which are illustrated by available examples in the literature. Based on a few simplifying assumptions, we further provide quantitative comparisons for the range of possible relative sizes of the manipulated object with respect to the robot. Taken together, these examples suggest new directions for research in legged robot manipulation, such as multifunctional limbs, terrain modeling, or learning-based control, to support a number of new deployments in challenging indoor/outdoor scenarios in warehouses/construction sites, preserved natural areas, and especially for home robotics.Comment: Preprint of the paper submitted to Frontiers in Mechanical Engineerin

    Micro/Nano Structures and Systems

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    Micro/Nano Structures and Systems: Analysis, Design, Manufacturing, and Reliability is a comprehensive guide that explores the various aspects of micro- and nanostructures and systems. From analysis and design to manufacturing and reliability, this reprint provides a thorough understanding of the latest methods and techniques used in the field. With an emphasis on modern computational and analytical methods and their integration with experimental techniques, this reprint is an invaluable resource for researchers and engineers working in the field of micro- and nanosystems, including micromachines, additive manufacturing at the microscale, micro/nano-electromechanical systems, and more. Written by leading experts in the field, this reprint offers a complete understanding of the physical and mechanical behavior of micro- and nanostructures, making it an essential reference for professionals in this field

    Design and Development of Climbing Robotic Systems for Automated Inspection of Steel Structures and Bridges

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    Steel structures are indispensable parts of modern civilization, with typical civil infrastructures including bridges, wind turbines, electric towers, oil rigs, ships, and submarines, all made of steel. These structures require frequent maintenance to ensure safety and longevity. Steel bridges are the most challenging architectures due totheir complexity and height. Most inspections are conducted manually by professional human inspectors with special devices to inspect visible damages and defects on or inside these structures. However, this procedure is usually highly time-consuming, costly, and risky. Automated solutions are desired to address this problem. However, arduous engineering is delaying progress. A complete system needs to deal with three main problems: (1) locomotive performance for the high complexity of steel bridges, including differential curvatures, transitions between beams, and obstacles; (2) data collection capability, inclusive of visible and invisible damages, in-depth information such as vibration, coat, and material thickness, etc.; and (3) working conditions made up of gust winds. To achieve such a complete system, this dissertation presents novel developments of inspection-climbing robots. Five different robot versions are designed to find the simplest and most effective configuration as well as control manner. Our approach started with (1) a transformable tank-like robot integrated with a haptic device and ii two natural-inspired locomotion, (2) a roller chain-like robot, (3) a hybrid worming mobile robot, (4) a multi-directional bicycle robot, and (5) an omni-directional climbing Robot, identified as the most potential solution for automated steel bridge inspection. For each robotic development, detailed mechanical analysis frameworks are presented. Both lab tests and field deployments of these robotic systems have been conducted to validate the proposed designs

    Bio-Inspired Soft Artificial Muscles for Robotic and Healthcare Applications

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    Soft robotics and soft artificial muscles have emerged as prolific research areas and have gained substantial traction over the last two decades. There is a large paradigm shift of research interests in soft artificial muscles for robotic and medical applications due to their soft, flexible and compliant characteristics compared to rigid actuators. Soft artificial muscles provide safe human-machine interaction, thus promoting their implementation in medical fields such as wearable assistive devices, haptic devices, soft surgical instruments and cardiac compression devices. Depending on the structure and material composition, soft artificial muscles can be controlled with various excitation sources, including electricity, magnetic fields, temperature and pressure. Pressure-driven artificial muscles are among the most popular soft actuators due to their fast response, high exertion force and energy efficiency. Although significant progress has been made, challenges remain for a new type of artificial muscle that is easy to manufacture, flexible, multifunctional and has a high length-to-diameter ratio. Inspired by human muscles, this thesis proposes a soft, scalable, flexible, multifunctional, responsive, and high aspect ratio hydraulic filament artificial muscle (HFAM) for robotic and medical applications. The HFAM consists of a silicone tube inserted inside a coil spring, which expands longitudinally when receiving positive hydraulic pressure. This simple fabrication method enables low-cost and mass production of a wide range of product sizes and materials. This thesis investigates the characteristics of the proposed HFAM and two implementations, as a wearable soft robotic glove to aid in grasping objects, and as a smart surgical suture for perforation closure. Multiple HFAMs are also combined by twisting and braiding techniques to enhance their performance. In addition, smart textiles are created from HFAMs using traditional knitting and weaving techniques for shape-programmable structures, shape-morphing soft robots and smart compression devices for massage therapy. Finally, a proof-of-concept robotic cardiac compression device is developed by arranging HFAMs in a special configuration to assist in heart failure treatment. Overall this fundamental work contributes to the development of soft artificial muscle technologies and paves the way for future comprehensive studies to develop HFAMs for specific medical and robotic requirements

    REDESIGNING THE COUNTER UNMANNED SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE

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    Includes supplementary material. Please contact [email protected] for access.When the Islamic State used Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to target coalition forces in 2014, the use of UAVs rapidly expanded, giving weak states and non-state actors an asymmetric advantage over their technologically superior foes. This asymmetry led the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to spend vast sums of money on counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS). Despite the market density, many C-UAS technologies use expensive, bulky, and high-power-consuming electronic attack methods for ground-to-air interdiction. This thesis outlines the current technology used for C-UAS and proposes a defense-in-depth framework using airborne C-UAS patrols outfitted with cyber-attack capabilities. Using aerial interdiction, this thesis develops a novel C-UAS device called the Detachable Drone Hijacker—a low-size, weight, and power C-UAS device designed to deliver cyber-attacks against commercial UAVs using the IEEE 802.11 wireless communication specification. The experimentation results show that the Detachable Drone Hijacker, which weighs 400 grams, consumes one Watt of power, and costs $250, can interdict adversarial UAVs with no unintended collateral damage. This thesis recommends that the DOD and DHS incorporates aerial interdiction to support its C-UAS defense-in-depth, using technologies similar to the Detachable Drone Hijacker.DASN-OE, Washington DC, 20310Captain, United States Marine CorpsApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

    Contactless Haptic Display Through Magnetic Field Control

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    Haptic rendering enables people to touch, perceive, and manipulate virtual objects in a virtual environment. Using six cascaded identical hollow disk electromagnets and a small permanent magnet attached to an operator's finger, this paper proposes and develops an untethered haptic interface through magnetic field control. The concentric hole inside the six cascaded electromagnets provides the workspace, where the 3D position of the permanent magnet is tracked with a Microsoft Kinect sensor. The driving currents of six cascaded electromagnets are calculated in real-time for generating the desired magnetic force. Offline data from an FEA (finite element analysis) based simulation, determines the relationship between the magnetic force, the driving currents, and the position of the permanent magnet. A set of experiments including the virtual object recognition experiment, the virtual surface identification experiment, and the user perception evaluation experiment were conducted to demonstrate the proposed system, where Microsoft HoloLens holographic glasses are used for visual rendering. The proposed magnetic haptic display leads to an untethered and non-contact interface for natural haptic rendering applications, which overcomes the constraints of mechanical linkages in tool-based traditional haptic devices

    Hands-on science. Rethinking STEAM education in times of uncertainty

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    After over two years of major constraints imposed by the COVID pandemic, the education world is still trying to find ways to adapt in order to keep providing, in an effective way, its crucial contribution to the world’ development our societies need and expect
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