Tactile Sensing for Robotic Applications

This chapter provides an overview of tactile sensing in robotics. This chapter is an attempt to answer three basic questions: \u2022 What is meant by Tactile Sensing? \u2022 Why Tactile Sensing is important? \u2022 How Tactile Sensing is achieved? The chapter is organized to sequentially provide the answers to above basic questions. Tactile sensing has often been considered as force sensing, which is not wholly true. In order to clarify such misconceptions about tactile sensing, it is defined in section 2. Why tactile section is important for robotics and what parameters are needed to be measured by tactile sensors to successfully perform various tasks, are discussed in section 3. An overview of `How tactile sensing has been achieved\u2019 is given in section 4, where a number of technologies and transduction methods, that have been used to improve the tactile sensing capability of robotic devices, are discussed. Lack of any tactile analog to Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) or Charge Coupled Devices (CCD) optical arrays has often been cited as one of the reasons for the slow development of tactile sensing vis-\ue0-vis other sense modalities like vision sensing. Our own contribution \u2013 development of tactile sensing arrays using piezoelectric polymers and involving silicon micromachining - is an attempt in the direction of achieving tactile analog of CMOS optical arrays. The first phase implementation of these tactile sensing arrays is discussed in section 5. Section 6 concludes the chapter with a brief discussion on the present status of tactile sensing and the challenges that remain to be solved

Southwest Research Institute assistance to NASA in biomedical areas of the technology utilization program Final report, 1 Feb. 1969 - 24 Aug. 1970

Research progress in technology transfer by NASA Biomedical Application Tea

Smart Textiles Production

The research field of smart textiles is currently witnessing a rapidly growing number of applications integrating intelligent functions in textile substrates. With an increasing amount of new developed product prototypes, the number of materials used and that of specially designed production technologies are also growing. This book is intended to provide an overview of materials, production technologies, and product concepts to different groups concerned with smart textiles. It will help designers to understand the possibilities of smart textile production, so that they are enabled to design this type of products. It will also help textile and electronics manufacturers to understand which production technologies are suitable to meet certain product requirements

Online condition monitoring of MV cable feeders using Rogowski coil sensors for PD measurements

Condition monitoring is a highly effective prognostic tool for incipient insulation degradation to avoid sudden failures of electrical components and to keep the power network in operation. Improved operational performance of the sensors and effective measurement techniques could enable the development of a robust monitoring system. This paper addresses two main aspects of condition monitoring: an enhanced design of an induction sensor that has the capability of measuring partial discharge (PD) signals emerging simultaneously from medium voltage cables and transformers, and an integrated monitoring system that enables the monitoring of a wider part of the cable feeder. Having described the conventional practices along with the authors’ own experiences and research on non-intrusive solutions, this paper proposes an optimum design of a Rogowski coil that can measure the PD signals from medium voltage cables, its accessories, and the distribution transformers. The proposed PD monitoring scheme is implemented using the directional sensitivity capability of Rogowski coils and a suitable sensor installation scheme that leads to the development of an integrated monitoring model for the components of a MV cable feeder. Furthermore, the paper presents forethought regarding huge amount of PD data from various sensors using a simplified and practical approach. In the perspective of today’s changing grid, the presented idea of integrated monitoring practices provide a concept towards automated condition monitoring.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Development of a Plasmonic On-Chip System to Characterize Changes from External Perturbations in Cardiomyocytes

Today’s heart-on-a-chip devices are hoped to be the state-of-the-art cell and tissue characterizing tool, in clinically applicable regenerative medicine and cardiac tissue engineering. Due to the coupled electromechanical activity of cardiomyocytes (CM), a comprehensive heart-on-a-chip device as a cell characterizing tool must encompass the capability to quantify cellular contractility, conductivity, excitability, and rhythmicity. This dissertation focuses on developing a successful and statistically relevant surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor for simultaneous recording of neonatal rat cardiomyocytes’ electrophysiological profile and mechanical motion under normal and perturbed conditions. The surface plasmon resonance technique can quantify (1) molecular binding onto a metal film, (2) bulk refractive index changes of the medium near (nm) the metal film, and (3) dielectric property changes of the metal film. We used thin gold metal films (also called chips) as our plasmonic sensor and obtained a periodic signal from spontaneously contracting CMs on the chip. Furthermore, we took advantage of a microfluidic module for controlled drug delivery to CMs on-chip, inhibiting and promoting their signaling pathways under dynamic flow. We identified that ionic channel activity of each contraction period of a live CM syncytium on a gold metal sensor would account for the non-specific ion adsorption onto the metal surface in a periodic manner. Moreover, the contraction of cardiomyocytes following their ion channel activity displaces the medium, changing its bulk refractive index near the metal surface. Hence, the real-time electromechanical activity of CMs using SPR sensors may be extracted as a time series we call the Plasmonic Cardio-Eukaryography Signal (P-CeG). The P-CeG signal render opportunities, where state-of-the-art heart-on-a-chip device complexities may subside to a simpler, faster and cheaper platform for label-free, non-invasive, and high throughput cellular characterization