A Biologically Inspired Jumping and Rolling Robot

Mobile robots for rough terrain are of interest to researchers as their range of possible uses is large, including exploration activities for inhospitable areas on Earth and on other planets and bodies in the solar system, searching in disaster sites for survivors, and performing surveillance for military applications. Nature generally achieves land movement by walking using legs, but additional modes such as climbing, jumping and rolling are all produced from legs as well. Robotics tends not to use this integrated approach and adds additional mechanisms to achieve additional movements. The spherical device described within this thesis, called Jollbot, integrated a rolling motion for faster movement over smoother terrain, with a jumping movement for rougher environments. Jollbot was developed over three prototypes. The first achieved pause-and-leap style jumps by slowly storing strain energy within the metal elements of a spherical structure using an internal mechanism to deform the sphere. A jump was produced when this stored energy was rapidly released. The second prototype achieved greater jump heights using a similar structure, and added direction control to each jump by moving its centre of gravity around the polar axis of the sphere. The final prototype successfully combined rolling (at a speed of 0.7 m/s, up 4° slopes, and over 44 mm obstacles) and jumping (0.5 m cleared height), both with direction control, using a 0.6 m spherical spring steel structure. Rolling was achieved by moving the centre of gravity outside of the sphere’s contact area with the ground. Jumping was achieved by deflecting the sphere in a similar method to the first and second prototypes, but through a larger percentage deflection. An evaluation of existing rough terrain robots is made possible through the development of a five-step scoring system that produces a single numerical performance score. The system is used to evaluate the performance of Jollbot.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Active Materials

What is an active material? This book aims to redefine perceptions of the materials that respond to their environment. Through the theory of the structure and functionality of materials found in nature a scientific approach to active materials is first identified. Further interviews with experts from the natural sciences and humanities then seeks to question and redefine this view of materials to create a new definition of active materials

Active Materials

What is an active material? This book aims to redefine perceptions of the materials that respond to their environment. Through the theory of the structure and functionality of materials found in nature a scientific approach to active materials is first identified. Further interviews with experts from the natural sciences and humanities then seeks to question and redefine this view of materials to create a new definition of active materials

Mechanics of Low Dimensional Biomimetic Scale Metamaterials

Combination of topology and material could play an important role in giving rise to nontraditional behavior in mechanical structures and is a typical strategy in nature. Topology is concerned with the geometrical and spatial properties of the objects, which are preserved under continues mechanical deformation of the object such as stretching, bending, twisting, etc. In this work, we focus on structures based on fish scale inspired surface topology. The utilized idea for surface topology is a bioinspired design on the substrate of biological scale-covered systems. Scales are a path breaking evolutionary adaptation that accompanied vertebrate evolution for the past 500 million years. Fish scales are inherently lightweight with diverse shapes, sizes, materials, and distribution, and they provide remarkable architecture-material enhancement, typical of metamaterials. Here we provide a perspective on mechanical behavior of fish scale inspired structures and quantify the origins of some of their striking mechanical properties that include nonlinear and directional strain stiffening in both bending and twisting, dual nature of friction which combines both resistance as well as adding stiffness to motion. We will provide derivation of mathematical laws that govern structure-property relationships that can help guide design. The response of biomimetic scale under twisting, bending and combined load is tailorable through the geometric arrangement and orientation of the scales. Also, the analytical models have been validated by the finite element analysis. We outline and explain the progress in understanding the complexities of these structures in global and local deformation modes and conclude by offering future perspectives and challenges

Volume 63, Number 05 (May 1945)

Music and World Unity Mexico\u27s Famous Folk Orchestra What is Musical Interpretation? Tell-How Tour of the Radio City Music Hall New Keys to Practice Mental Projection in Singing (interview with Nadine Conner) Music Teacher and the Post-War Period One Hour of Practice Tragic Memorial Musical Progress in San Salvador Music for the Mentally Disturbed America and Good Music (interview with Howard Barlow)https://digitalcommons.gardner-webb.edu/etude/1205/thumbnail.jp

The contemporary countertenor in context: vocal production, gender/sexuality, and reception

This dissertation highlights the importance of vocal registration/production in the ongoing discussion of how the material qualities of the singing voice transmit socially constructed meaning. Using the modern-day countertenor as an example, I show how falsetto singing can act as a marker for gender/sexuality. The first chapter of the project explains the anatomy and physiology of the singing voice, particularly as it applies to the falsetto register and the contemporary countertenor. Then, a brief look at how singing and gender fit within the burgeoning field of voice studies ensues. Chapter 2 inspects theories of vocal gender, identity, and sexuality in regards to vocal embodiment and applies them to the voice, singing, and the contemporary countertenor. Chapter 3 looks at the reception theories of Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser in order to pinpoint ways in which social norms can be inscribed on the voice, especially that of the countertenor Klaus Nomi. The last three chapters apply the theories purported in the first half of the dissertation to the contemporary countertenor in three countries–the United States, England, and Japan. Examining the use and appreciation of the countertenor in these different societies provides examples of how the falsetto register, singing, and norms of gender/sexuality are connected in the different social contexts. The epilogue projects how this type of academic inquiry can extend to other types of singing and societies

Space opera: a hybrid form of science fiction and fantasy

This thesis considers space opera as a hybrid form of science fiction and fantasy.“Falling Stars,” the creative component which includes fantasy, space opera and science fiction stories, constitutes a spectrum of speculative fiction. In order to illustrate the similarities and difference between the genres represented in the spectrum, I focus on the central figure of the alien other and the ways in which such a figure can be gendered and embodied. The space opera novella combines motifs of both fantasy and science fiction within the figure of the cyborg, Orlando, who is transgendered and hyperchangeably embodied.The exegesis offers a theoretical context through which to view the creative work. I argue that space operas are melodramatic adventure stories, which operate as a hybrid form of science fiction and fantasy, using the non-realist expectations inherent in both, but mixing the extrapolations and icons of science fiction with the self-consistent but unbelievable discontinuities of fantasy. I also consider space opera’s tendency to exhibit a conservative, unexamined colonialistic imperative, with the attendant assumptions that create a potential for feminist subversion

Association of Architecture Schools in Australasia

"Techniques and Technologies: Transfer and Transformation", proceedings of the 2007 AASA Conference held September 27-29, 2007, at the School of Architecture, UTS

Arthur Koestler\u27s hope in the unseen: twentieth-century efforts to retrieve the spirit of liberalism

The analysis in this dissertation connects Arthur Koestler’s nonfiction and fiction to the political circumstances that defined Europe during the early twentieth century. It draws particular attention to events in the 1930s as representing a paucity of choices that frustrated certain liberal values held by Koestler and others. It shows how after taking sides with the German Communist Party in the early 1930s, he confronted then rejected the politics of the extreme left and right, leading himself toward a dual career as social philosopher and anti-Communist. This paper will explain how Koestler’s reporting of the Spanish Civil War, combined with his description of his own attraction to and apostasy form Communism, established him as an important writer. It will look at Koestler’s writing, particularly his imaginative use of analogy and metaphor, established during his early career as a journalist, as it discloses his dedication to the liberal notion of the common man’s ability to understand complex ideas. This narrative will focus on Koestler’s plea for an open, non-determined universe in several of his works. These include his novels, The Gladiators, Darkness at Noon, and Arrival and Departure, and his autobiographical works, Scum of the Earth, Arrow in the Blue, and The Invisible Writing. Close analysis will be given to his philosophical works, The Yogi and the Commissar, Insight and Outlook, and The Act of Creation. Some space will be given to the philosophy of science revealed in Koestler’s The Ghost in the Machine. This paper will pay attention to two of Koestler’s works that portray the practice of science as a humanistic endeavor. These are The Sleepwalkers and The Case of the Mid-wife Toad. The primary goal of this investigation is to show how Arthur Koestler’s philosophical writing derived from the union of liberal political values in his musings about science and psychology. The analysis in this paper shows the central importance of Koestler’s political experiences during the 1930s but also investigates the longer time frame of his life between the 1920s and the early 1980s. Its thesis is that Arthur Koestler persisted in his optimism for the longer term in the face of dehumanizing, pessimism-creating events that he experienced in the short term. This study concludes that it was Koestler’s ties to values and optimistic attitudes established between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries by European culture that brought him to a hopeful attitude in humankind’s future. It shows how Koestler maintained a hope in things that were not always apparent in his own lifetime. This dissertation explains that, in spite of the political events that defined the first half of the twentieth century, Arthur Koestler maintained a faith in modern European culture connected to its longer traditions of humanism