Understanding the Interaction between Older Adults and Soft Service Robots: Insights from Robotics and the Technology Acceptance Model

As the world’s population increasingly ages, we need technological solutions such as robotics technology to assist older adults in their daily tasks. In this regard, we examine soft service robots’ potential to help care for the elderly. To do so, we developed and tested the degree to which they would accept a soft service robot that catered to their functional needs in the home environment. We used embodied artificial to develop an in-house teleoperated human-sized soft service robot that performed object-retrieval tasks with a soft gripper. Using an extended technology acceptance model as a theoretical lens, we conducted a study with 79 older adults to examine the degree to which they would accept a soft service robot in the home environment. We found perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and subjective norms as significant predictors that positively influenced older adults’ intention to adopt and use soft service robots. However, we also found that perceived anxiety and perceived likability did not significantly predict older adults’ intention to adopt and use soft service robots. We discuss the implications, limitations, and future research directions that arise from these findings

The Research on Soft Pneumatic Actuators in Italy: Design Solutions and Applications

Interest in soft actuators has increased enormously in the last 10 years. Thanks to their compliance and flexibility, they are suitable to be employed to actuate devices that must safely interact with humans or delicate objects or to actuate bio-inspired robots able to move in hostile environments. This paper reviews the research on soft pneumatic actuators conducted in Italy, focusing on mechanical design, analytical modeling, and possible application. A classification based on the geometry is proposed, since a wide set of architectures and manufacturing solutions are available. This aspect is confirmed by the extent of scenarios in which researchers take advantage of such systems’ improved flexibility and functionality. Several applications regarding bio-robotics, bioengineering, wearable devices, and more are presented and discussed

DEVELOPMENT OF A SOFT PNEUMATIC ACTUATOR FOR MODULAR ROBOTIC MECHANISMS

Soft robotics is a widely and rapidly growing field of research today. Soft pneumatic actuators, as a fundamental element in soft robotics, have gained huge popularity and are being employed for the development of soft robots. During the last decade, a variety of hyper-elastic robotic systems have been realized. As the name suggests, such robots are made up of soft materials, and do not have any underlying rigid mechanical structure. These robots are actuated employing various methods like pneumatic, electroactive, jamming etc. Generally, in order to achieve a desired mechanical response to produce required actuation or manipulation, two or more materials having different stiffness are utilized to develop a soft robot. However, this method introduces complications in the fabrication process as well as in further design flexibility and modifications. The current work presents a design scheme of a soft robotic actuator adapting an easier fabrication approach, which is economical and environment friendly as well. The purpose is the realization of a soft pneumatic actuator having functional ability to produce effective actuation, and which is further employable to develop modular and scalable mechanisms. That infers to scrutinize the profile and orientation of the internal actuation cavity and the outer shape of viii the actuator. Utilization of a single material for this actuator has been considered to make this design scheme convenient. A commercial silicone rubber was selected which served for an economical process both in terms of the cost as well as its accommodating fabrication process through molding. In order to obtain the material behavior, \u2018Ansys Workbench 17.1 R \u2019 has been used. Cubic outline for the actuator aided towards the realization of a body shape which can easily be engaged for the development of modular mechanisms employing multiple units. This outer body shape further facilitates to achieve the stability and portability of the actuator. The soft actuator has been named \u2018Soft Cubic Module\u2019 based on its external cubic shape. For the internal actuation cavity design, various shapes, such as spherical, elliptical and cylindrical, were examined considering their different sizes and orientations within the cubic module. These internal cavities were simulated in order to achieve single degree of freedom actuation. That means, only one face of the cube is principally required to produce effective deformation. \u2018Creo Perametric 3.0 M 130\u2019 has been used to design the model and to evaluate the performance of actuation cavities in terms of effective deformation and the resulting von-mises stress. Out of the simulated profiles, cylindrical cavity with desired outcomes has been further considered to design the soft actuator. \u2018Ansys Workbench 17.1 R \u2019 environment was further used to assess the performance of cylindrical actuation cavity. Evaluation in two different simulation environments helped to validate the initially achieved results. The developed soft cubic actuator was then employed to develop different mechanisms in a single unit configuration as well as multi-unit robotic system developments. This design scheme is considered as the first tool to investigate its capacity to perform certain given tasks in various configurations. Alongside its application as a single unit gripper and a two unit bio-mimetic crawling mechanism, this soft actuator has been employed to realize a four degree ix of freedom robotic mechanism. The formation of this primitive soft robotic four axis mechanism is being further considered to develop an equivalent mechanism similar to the well known Stewart platform, with advantages of compactness, simpler kinematics design, easier control, and lesser cost. Overall, the accomplished results indicate that the design scheme of Soft Cubic Module is helpful in realizing a simple and cost-effective soft pneumatic actuator which is modular and scalable. Another favourable point of this scheme is the use of a single material with convenient fabrication and handling

The development and evaluation of functional electrical stimulation rowing for health, exercise and sport for persons with spinal cord injury

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.At the beginning of this project it was known that functional electrical stimulation (FES) rowing was technically feasible, but no studies on health benefits had been conducted and it was unclear what levels of fitness could be reliably attained by spinal cord injured (SCI) users. This thesis shows that training with the first-generation of the FES-rowing system (RowStim II), seven paraplegics achieved high V02peak values (21.0 - 27.9 ml-kg-1-min-1) and a significant (10%) increase in V02peak. This was also found to significantly improve insulin sensitivity and leptin levels but it had no significant effect on lipid profiles or body composition, possibly caused by technological limitations of the RowStim 11. However, training volumes were positively correlated with improvements in lipid profile and body composition. This motivated further technical development of the RowStim to enable paraplegics to train harder and longer. The development included a more stable seat configuration with redesigned trunk retaining straps, a rigid low friction carriage/brake system, improved leg stabiliser, improved stimulation control and a gravity-assisted return phase. This RowStim III has enabled paraplegics to participate in the British (2004, 2005 and 2006) and World Indoor Rowing Championships (2006). The rowers have achieved higher exercise intensities (26.8 -31.0 ml. kg- I .min-1) and increased exercise volumes (1,150 kcal-week-1) with the RowStim III. Such levels of physical activity, which are difficult to achieve for paraplegics using traditional exercises, are correlated with significant health benefits in the able-bodied. Preliminary results suggest that perfusion of the quadriceps muscle during FES-rowing might limit the exercise time in novice rowers. Other preliminary data from pressure mapping indicate that there is a dynamic pattern during FES-rowing, which might reduce the risk for pressure sores during FES-rowing. This thesis shows that FES-rowing is now a rapidly developing exercise modality, which has been shown to enable safe and well-tolerated exercise for individuals with SCI. It can offer unprecedented levels of cardiovascular fitness, competitive challenges and potentially important health benefits

Cognitive Security Framework For Heterogeneous Sensor Network Using Swarm Intelligence

Rapid development of sensor technology has led to applications ranging from academic to military in a short time span. These tiny sensors are deployed in environments where security for data or hardware cannot be guaranteed. Due to resource constraints, traditional security schemes cannot be directly applied. Unfortunately, due to minimal or no communication security schemes, the data, link and the sensor node can be easily tampered by intruder attacks. This dissertation presents a security framework applied to a sensor network that can be managed by a cohesive sensor manager. A simple framework that can support security based on situation assessment is best suited for chaotic and harsh environments. The objective of this research is designing an evolutionary algorithm with controllable parameters to solve existing and new security threats in a heterogeneous communication network. An in-depth analysis of the different threats and the security measures applied considering the resource constrained network is explored. Any framework works best, if the correlated or orthogonal performance parameters are carefully considered based on system goals and functions. Hence, a trade-off between the different performance parameters based on weights from partially ordered sets is applied to satisfy application specific requirements and security measures. The proposed novel framework controls heterogeneous sensor network requirements,and balance the resources optimally and efficiently while communicating securely using a multi-objection function. In addition, the framework can measure the affect of single or combined denial of service attacks and also predict new attacks under both cooperative and non-cooperative sensor nodes. The cognitive intuition of the framework is evaluated under different simulated real time scenarios such as Health-care monitoring, Emergency Responder, VANET, Biometric security access system, and Battlefield monitoring. The proposed three-tiered Cognitive Security Framework is capable of performing situation assessment and performs the appropriate security measures to maintain reliability and security of the system. The first tier of the proposed framework, a crosslayer cognitive security protocol defends the communication link between nodes during denial-of-Service attacks by re-routing data through secure nodes. The cognitive nature of the protocol balances resources and security making optimal decisions to obtain reachable and reliable solutions. The versatility and robustness of the protocol is justified by the results obtained in simulating health-care and emergency responder applications under Sybil and Wormhole attacks. The protocol considers metrics from each layer of the network model to obtain an optimal and feasible resource efficient solution. In the second tier, the emergent behavior of the protocol is further extended to mine information from the nodes to defend the network against denial-of-service attack using Bayesian models. The jammer attack is considered the most vulnerable attack, and therefore simulated vehicular ad-hoc network is experimented with varied types of jammer. Classification of the jammer under various attack scenarios is formulated to predict the genuineness of the attacks on the sensor nodes using receiver operating characteristics. In addition to detecting the jammer attack, a simple technique of locating the jammer under cooperative nodes is implemented. This feature enables the network in isolating the jammer or the reputation of node is affected, thus removing the malicious node from participating in future routes. Finally, a intrusion detection system using `bait\u27 architecture is analyzed where resources is traded-off for the sake of security due to sensitivity of the application. The architecture strategically enables ant agents to detect and track the intruders threateningthe network. The proposed framework is evaluated based on accuracy and speed of intrusion detection before the network is compromised. This process of detecting the intrusion earlier helps learn future attacks, but also serves as a defense countermeasure. The simulated scenarios of this dissertation show that Cognitive Security Framework isbest suited for both homogeneous and heterogeneous sensor networks