Impact of Ear Occlusion on In-Ear Sounds Generated by Intra-oral Behaviors

We conducted a case study with one volunteer and a recording setup to detect sounds induced by the actions: jaw clenching, tooth grinding, reading, eating, and drinking. The setup consisted of two in-ear microphones, where the left ear was semi-occluded with a commercially available earpiece and the right ear was occluded with a mouldable silicon ear piece. Investigations in the time and frequency domains demonstrated that for behaviors such as eating, tooth grinding, and reading, sounds could be recorded with both sensors. For jaw clenching, however, occluding the ear with a mouldable piece was necessary to enable its detection. This can be attributed to the fact that the mouldable ear piece sealed the ear canal and isolated it from the environment, resulting in a detectable change in pressure. In conclusion, our work suggests that detecting behaviors such as eating, grinding, reading with a semi-occluded ear is possible, whereas, behaviors such as clenching require the complete occlusion of the ear if the activity should be easily detectable. Nevertheless, the latter approach may limit real-world applicability because it hinders the hearing capabilities.</p

Soft pneumatic actuators: a review of design, fabrication, modeling, sensing, control and applications

Soft robotics is a rapidly evolving field where robots are fabricated using highly deformable materials and usually follow a bioinspired design. Their high dexterity and safety make them ideal for applications such as gripping, locomotion, and biomedical devices, where the environment is highly dynamic and sensitive to physical interaction. Pneumatic actuation remains the dominant technology in soft robotics due to its low cost and mass, fast response time, and easy implementation. Given the significant number of publications in soft robotics over recent years, newcomers and even established researchers may have difficulty assessing the state of the art. To address this issue, this article summarizes the development of soft pneumatic actuators and robots up until the date of publication. The scope of this article includes the design, modeling, fabrication, actuation, characterization, sensing, control, and applications of soft robotic devices. In addition to a historical overview, there is a special emphasis on recent advances such as novel designs, differential simulators, analytical and numerical modeling methods, topology optimization, data-driven modeling and control methods, hardware control boards, and nonlinear estimation and control techniques. Finally, the capabilities and limitations of soft pneumatic actuators and robots are discussed and directions for future research are identified

Bio-inspired control concepts for elastic rotatory joint drives

Annunziata S. Bio-inspired control concepts for elastic rotatory joint drives. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2014.Recent research in robotics focuses the attention on the control of compliant actuators to improve safety and to make the interaction with humans more natural. Lightweight construction, real elasticity directly integrated into the joint and control of joint compliance seem to play the most important role for improving safety in human-machine interaction. Humans are intrinsically elastic and the Central Nervous System (CNS) takes advantage of the nonlinear muscle properties to modulate joint stiffness through co-contraction of antagonistic muscles. If alterable compliance in robotic systems is desirable, its introduction can be achieved in two fundamentally different ways. The first way is a technical approach based on the idea of impedance control as formulated by Hogan (1985). The second approach is bioinspired and introduces physiological control mechanisms, muscle models and virtual antagonistic actuation into the control system of a robotics joint drive. Recently, biological models for the control of muscles in vertebrates have been developed (Franklin et al., 2008; Yang et al., 2011). Still, the question remains, how a control algorithm, acting on two or even more muscles, can be implemented in a technical joint. With the objective to implement bio-inspired control strategies on a robotic joint drive, in this thesis, musculoskeletal models, biological parameters and bio-inspired control laws are analyzed and tested. A simplified model of the human elbow joint is used to analyze muscle-like actuation and stiffness properties at the joint. Based on recent results related to how the CNS controls antagonistic muscles, a biological control pattern based on reciprocal activation and co-activation is tested for the control of torque and stiffness at the joint. However, a closer analysis of the musculoskeletal parameters reveals that, despite antagonistic co-activation, domains in the joint range of motion might occur for which stiffness variation is limited (low stiffness variability) or even impossible (stiffness nodes). The first part of this thesis presents novel strategies for simultaneous control of torque and stiffness in a hinge joint actuated by two antagonistic muscle pairs. One strategy handles stiffness nodes by shifting them away from the current joint position and thus regaining stiffness controllability. To prevent domains of low stiffness variation, an optimal biomechanical setup is sought and finally defined which allows for a maximal stiffness variation across a wide angular joint range. Based on this optimal setup, four additional control approaches are designed and tested in simulation which deliver stiffnesses and torques comparable to those obtained in the optimal case. The control approaches combine biologically justified aspects, like reciprocal activation and co-activation, with novel ideas like inverse dynamics model and activation overflow. The second part of the thesis focuses on the design, test and validation of a bio-inspired position and stiffness control strategy for a lightweight, intrinsically elastic, robotics joint drive. Reciprocal activation and co-activation are used here as a starting point to concurrently control stiffness and position (instead of torque). A stability analysis, performed on the human elbow joint model, confirms that the co-activation level (and, as a consequence, the stiffness level) affects the reaction of the joint to external perturbations in terms of oscillations and settling time. To account for the stability aspects and implement further mechanisms found in the CNS of vertebrates, models of the muscle spindles, Golgi tendon organs, alpha-motor neurons and Renshaw cells, are added to the control algorithm. Nevertheless, while in many biological systems, antagonistic muscles generate the movement of the joint, in simple robotic systems, the movement is generated by only one actuator. Therefore, in order to transmit the desired bio-inspired movement to the technical elbow, the sum of all muscle-torques acting on the joint (i.e. the net-torque at the joint), has to be transmitted to the lightweight, inherently elastic, joint drive and controlled. A speed-torque control cascade is designed, implemented and tested on the robotics joint drive. The impedance range of the human elbow joint is evaluated in simulation and compared to the range obtained when the technical joint drive is acting instead of its biological counterpart. The bio-inspired controlled joint drive is able to reach the desired position and modulate joint compliance according to the disturbance like humans do, both in static cases and during movements, while keeping stability

Automation and Robotics: Latest Achievements, Challenges and Prospects

This SI presents the latest achievements, challenges and prospects for drives, actuators, sensors, controls and robot navigation with reverse validation and applications in the field of industrial automation and robotics. Automation, supported by robotics, can effectively speed up and improve production. The industrialization of complex mechatronic components, especially robots, requires a large number of special processes already in the pre-production stage provided by modelling and simulation. This area of research from the very beginning includes drives, process technology, actuators, sensors, control systems and all connections in mechatronic systems. Automation and robotics form broad-spectrum areas of research, which are tightly interconnected. To reduce costs in the pre-production stage and to reduce production preparation time, it is necessary to solve complex tasks in the form of simulation with the use of standard software products and new technologies that allow, for example, machine vision and other imaging tools to examine new physical contexts, dependencies and connections

MUSME 2011 4 th International Symposium on Multibody Systems and Mechatronics

El libro de actas recoge las aportaciones de los autores a través de los correspondientes artículos a la Dinámica de Sistemas Multicuerpo y la Mecatrónica (Musme). Estas disciplinas se han convertido en una importante herramienta para diseñar máquinas, analizar prototipos virtuales y realizar análisis CAD sobre complejos sistemas mecánicos articulados multicuerpo. La dinámica de sistemas multicuerpo comprende un gran número de aspectos que incluyen la mecánica, dinámica estructural, matemáticas aplicadas, métodos de control, ciencia de los ordenadores y mecatrónica. Los artículos recogidos en el libro de actas están relacionados con alguno de los siguientes tópicos del congreso: Análisis y síntesis de mecanismos ; Diseño de algoritmos para sistemas mecatrónicos ; Procedimientos de simulación y resultados ; Prototipos y rendimiento ; Robots y micromáquinas ; Validaciones experimentales ; Teoría de simulación mecatrónica ; Sistemas mecatrónicos ; Control de sistemas mecatrónicosUniversitat Politècnica de València (2011). MUSME 2011 4 th International Symposium on Multibody Systems and Mechatronics. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/13224Archivo delegad

Biomechatronics: Harmonizing Mechatronic Systems with Human Beings

This eBook provides a comprehensive treatise on modern biomechatronic systems centred around human applications. A particular emphasis is given to exoskeleton designs for assistance and training with advanced interfaces in human-machine interaction. Some of these designs are validated with experimental results which the reader will find very informative as building-blocks for designing such systems. This eBook will be ideally suited to those researching in biomechatronic area with bio-feedback applications or those who are involved in high-end research on manmachine interfaces. This may also serve as a textbook for biomechatronic design at post-graduate level

Soft Robotics: Design for Simplicity, Performance, and Robustness of Robots for Interaction with Humans.

This thesis deals with the design possibilities concerning the next generation of advanced Robots. Aim of the work is to study, analyse and realise artificial systems that are essentially simple, performing and robust and can live and coexist with humans. The main design guideline followed in doing so is the Soft Robotics Approach, that implies the design of systems with intrinsic mechanical compliance in their architecture. The first part of the thesis addresses design of new soft robotics actuators, or robotic muscles. At the beginning are provided information about what a robotic muscle is and what is needed to realise it. A possible classification of these systems is analysed and some criteria useful for their comparison are explained. After, a set of functional specifications and parameters is identified and defined, to characterise a specific subset of this kind of actuators, called Variable Stiffness Actuators. The selected parameters converge in a data-sheet that easily defines performance and abilities of the robotic system. A complete strategy for the design and realisation of this kind of system is provided, which takes into account their me- chanical morphology and architecture. As consequence of this, some new actuators are developed, validated and employed in the execution of complex experimental tasks. In particular the actuator VSA-Cube and its add-on, a Variable Damper, are developed as the main com- ponents of a robotics low-cost platform, called VSA-CubeBot, that v can be used as an exploratory platform for multi degrees of freedom experiments. Experimental validations and mathematical models of the system employed in multi degrees of freedom tasks (bimanual as- sembly and drawing on an uneven surface), are reported. The second part of the thesis is about the design of multi fingered hands for robots. In this part of the work the Pisa-IIT SoftHand is introduced. It is a novel robot hand prototype designed with the purpose of being as easily usable, robust and simple as an industrial gripper, while exhibiting a level of grasping versatility and an aspect comparable to that of the human hand. In the thesis the main theo- retical tool used to enable such simplification, i.e. the neuroscience– based notion of soft synergies, are briefly reviewed. The approach proposed rests on ideas coming from underactuated hand design. A synthesis method to realize a desired set of soft synergies through the principled design of adaptive underactuated mechanisms, which is called the method of adaptive synergies, is discussed. This ap- proach leads to the design of hands accommodating in principle an arbitrary number of soft synergies, as demonstrated in grasping and manipulation simulations and experiments with a prototype. As a particular instance of application of the method of adaptive syner- gies, the Pisa–IIT SoftHand is then described in detail. The design and implementation of the prototype hand are shown and its effec- tiveness demonstrated through grasping experiments. Finally, control of the Pisa/IIT Hand is considered. Few different control strategies are adopted, including an experimental setup with the use of surface Electromyographic signals

Bio-Inspired Robotics

Modern robotic technologies have enabled robots to operate in a variety of unstructured and dynamically-changing environments, in addition to traditional structured environments. Robots have, thus, become an important element in our everyday lives. One key approach to develop such intelligent and autonomous robots is to draw inspiration from biological systems. Biological structure, mechanisms, and underlying principles have the potential to provide new ideas to support the improvement of conventional robotic designs and control. Such biological principles usually originate from animal or even plant models, for robots, which can sense, think, walk, swim, crawl, jump or even fly. Thus, it is believed that these bio-inspired methods are becoming increasingly important in the face of complex applications. Bio-inspired robotics is leading to the study of innovative structures and computing with sensory–motor coordination and learning to achieve intelligence, flexibility, stability, and adaptation for emergent robotic applications, such as manipulation, learning, and control. This Special Issue invites original papers of innovative ideas and concepts, new discoveries and improvements, and novel applications and business models relevant to the selected topics of ``Bio-Inspired Robotics''. Bio-Inspired Robotics is a broad topic and an ongoing expanding field. This Special Issue collates 30 papers that address some of the important challenges and opportunities in this broad and expanding field