Force-Guiding Particle Chains for Shape-Shifting Displays

We present design and implementation of a chain of particles that can be programmed to fold the chain into a given curve. The particles guide an external force to fold, therefore the particles are simple and amenable for miniaturization. A chain can consist of a large number of such particles. Using multiple of these chains, a shape-shifting display can be constructed that folds its initially flat surface to approximate a given 3D shape that can be touched and modified by users, for example, enabling architects to interactively view, touch, and modify a 3D model of a building.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure, submitted to IROS 201

A Novel Fiber Jamming Theory and Experimental Verification

This thesis developed a novel theory of fiber jamming and experimentally verified it. The theory relates the performance, which is the ratio between the stiff and soft states of a fiber jamming chamber, to three relative design parameters: the ratio of the wall thickness to the membrane inner diameter, the ratio of the fiber diameter to membrane inner diameter, and the number of fibers. These three parameters, when held constant across different chamber sizes, hold the performance constant. To test the theory, three different types of fiber jamming chambers were built in three different sizes. Each chamber was set up as a cantilever beam and deflected 10mm in both the un-jammed (soft) and jammed (stiff) states. When the three design parameters were held constant, the performance of the chamber was consistent within 10\%. In contrast, when the parameters were altered, there was a statistically significant $p \u3c .0001$ and noticeable effect on chamber performance. These two results can be used in tandem to design miniaturized fiber jamming chambers. These results also have a direct application in soft robots designed for minimally invasive surgery

Novel pneumatic circuit for the computational control of soft robots

Soft robots are of significant research interest in recent decades due to their adaptability to unstructured environments and safe interaction with humans. Soft pneumatic robots, one of the most dominant subsets of soft robots, utilize the interaction between soft elastomeric materials and pressurized air to achieve desired functions. However, the systems currently used for signal computation and pneumatic regulation often make use of rigid valves, pumps, syringe drivers, microcontrollers et al. These bulky and non-integrable devices limit the performance of pneumatically-driven soft robots, carrying challenges for the robot to be miniaturized, untethered, and agile. This DPhil aims to develop pneumatic circuits that can be integrated into the soft robot bodies while performing both onboard computation and control. This thesis presents our contributions towards the aforementioned objective step by step. Firstly, we designed a 3D-printable bistable valve with tunable behaviours for controlling soft pneumatic robots. As an integrable control device, the valve stores one bit of binary information without requiring a constant energy supply and correspondingly controls a pneumatic chamber. Secondly, in order to reduce the number of valves required to control multi-chamber soft robots, we introduced a modular approach to design multi-channel bistable valves based on the previous work. Thirdly, in order to achieve continuous pressure modulation with integrable devices, we designed a soft proportional valve, utilizing the continuous deformation of Magnetorheological Elastomer (MRE) under magnetic flux. Apart from the analogue activation manner, this design also ensures a fast response time, operating at a time scale of tens of milliseconds, much shorter than the mechanical response time of most soft pneumatic actuators. Fourthly, to achieve onboard proportional control of multi-chamber soft robots, we developed an MRE valve array with an embedded cooling chamber. Physical experiments showed that our MRE valve array ensured the independence and accuracy of each valve unit within it, with a significantly lowered temperature of 73.9 $^o$C under 5 minutes of operation. Lastly, we developed an open-source software toolbox supporting the design of integrable pneumatic logic circuits to enhance their accessibility and performance. The toolbox comes with a graphical user interface (GUI) to take users' desired logic functions in the form of a truth table and a set of 2D space constraints related to the available space onboard the robot. It then schedules the pneumatic circuit which performs the desired computation within the space constraints and produces a 3D-printable CAD file that can be fabricated and used directly. The work presented in this thesis enables the community to simplify the process of integrating control devices into soft pneumatic robots, thereby paving the way for a new generation of fully untethered and autonomous soft robots

Micro and Desktop Factory Roadmap

Terms desktop and microfactory both refer to production equipment that is miniaturized down to the level where it can placed on desktop and manually moved without any lifting aids. In this context, micro does not necessarily refer to the size of parts produced or their features, or the actual size or resolution of the equipment. Instead, micro refers to a general objective of downscaling production equipment to the same scale with the products they are manufacturing. Academic research literature speculates with several advantages and benefits of using miniaturized production equipment. These range from reduced use of energy and other resources (such as raw material) to better operator ergonomics and from greater equipment flexibility and reconfigurability to ubiquitous manufacturing (manufacturing on-the-spot, i.e. manufacturing the end product where it is used). Academic research has also generated several pieces of equipment and application demonstrations, and many of those are described in this document. Despite of nearly two decades of academic research, wider industrial breakthrough has not yet taken place and, in fact, many of the speculated advantages have not been proven or are not (yet) practical. However, there are successful industrial examples including miniaturized machining units; robotic, assembly and process cells; as well as other pieces of desktop scale equipment. These are also presented in this document. Looking at and analysing the current state of micro and desktop production related academic and commercial research and development, there are notable gaps that should be addressed. Many of these are general to several fields, such as understanding the actual needs of industry, whereas some are specific to miniaturised production field. One such example is the size of the equipment: research equipment is often “too small” to be commercially viable alternative. However, it is important to seek the limits of miniaturisation and even though research results might not be directly adaptable to industrial use, companies get ideas and solution models from research. The field of desktop production is new and the future development directions are not clear. In general, there seems to be two main development directions for micro and desktop factory equipment: 1) Small size equipment assisting human operators at the corner of desk 2) Small size equipment forming fully automatic production lines (including line components, modules, and cells) These, and other aspects including visions of potential application areas and business models for system providers, are discussed in detail in this roadmap. To meet the visions presented, some actions are needed. Therefore, this document gives guidelines for various industrial user groups (end users of miniaturized production equipment, system providers/integrators and component providers) as well as academia for forming their strategies in order to exploit the benefits of miniaturized production. To summarise, the basic guidelines for different actors are: • Everyone: Push the desktop ideology and awareness of the technology and its possibilities. Market and be present at events where potential new fields get together. Tell what is available and what is needed. • Equipment end users: Specify and determine what is needed. Be brave to try out new ways of doing things. Think what is really needed – do not over specify. • System providers / integrators: Organize own operations and product portfolios so that supplying equipment fulfilling the end user specifications can be done profitably. • Component providers: Design and supply components which are cost-efficient and easy to integrate to and to take into use in desktop scale equipment. • Academia: Look further into future, support industrial sector in their shorter term development work and act as a facilitator for cooperation between different actors

Micro-manufacturing : research, technology outcomes and development issues

Besides continuing effort in developing MEMS-based manufacturing techniques, latest effort in Micro-manufacturing is also in Non-MEMS-based manufacturing. Research and technological development (RTD) in this field is encouraged by the increased demand on micro-components as well as promised development in the scaling down of the traditional macro-manufacturing processes for micro-length-scale manufacturing. This paper highlights some EU funded research activities in micro/nano-manufacturing, and gives examples of the latest development in micro-manufacturing methods/techniques, process chains, hybrid-processes, manufacturing equipment and supporting technologies/device, etc., which is followed by a summary of the achievements of the EU MASMICRO project. Finally, concluding remarks are given, which raise several issues concerning further development in micro-manufacturing

Autonomous Soft Robotic Fish Capable of Escape Maneuvers Using Fluidic Elastomer Actuators

In this work we describe an autonomous soft-bodied robot that is both self-contained and capable of rapid, continuum-body motion. We detail the design, modeling, fabrication, and control of the soft fish, focusing on enabling the robot to perform rapid escape responses. The robot employs a compliant body with embedded actuators emulating the slender anatomical form of a fish. In addition, the robot has a novel fluidic actuation system that drives body motion and has all the subsystems of a traditional robot onboard: power, actuation, processing, and control. At the core of the fish's soft body is an array of fluidic elastomer actuators. We design the fish to emulate escape responses in addition to forward swimming because such maneuvers require rapid body accelerations and continuum-body motion. These maneuvers showcase the performance capabilities of this self-contained robot. The kinematics and controllability of the robot during simulated escape response maneuvers are analyzed and compared with studies on biological fish. We show that during escape responses, the soft-bodied robot has similar input–output relationships to those observed in biological fish. The major implication of this work is that we show soft robots can be both self-contained and capable of rapid body motion.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF IIS1226883)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF CCF1138967)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (1122374

What is missing in autonomous discovery: Open challenges for the community

Self-driving labs (SDLs) leverage combinations of artificial intelligence, automation, and advanced computing to accelerate scientific discovery. The promise of this field has given rise to a rich community of passionate scientists, engineers, and social scientists, as evidenced by the development of the Acceleration Consortium and recent Accelerate Conference. Despite its strengths, this rapidly developing field presents numerous opportunities for growth, challenges to overcome, and potential risks of which to remain aware. This community perspective builds on a discourse instantiated during the first Accelerate Conference, and looks to the future of self-driving labs with a tempered optimism. Incorporating input from academia, government, and industry, we briefly describe the current status of self-driving labs, then turn our attention to barriers, opportunities, and a vision for what is possible. Our field is delivering solutions in technology and infrastructure, artificial intelligence and knowledge generation, and education and workforce development. In the spirit of community, we intend for this work to foster discussion and drive best practices as our field grows

Design and implementation of double H’-gantry manipulator for TUT microfactory concept

This Master of Science thesis depicts the mechanical design and physical implementa-tion of double H’-gantry manipulator called DOHMAN. The H’-gantry mechanism is belt driven, two dimensional positioning device in which the belt is arranged in capital “H” form, and enables one linear and one rotary movement. The Ball-Screw Spline, in addition, is mechanism that consists of Ball Screw Nut, Ball Spline Nut, and Lead Screw with screw and spline grooves that fit both nuts. This mechanism enables linear and rotary displacement along the same axis. The DOHMAN robot is made of two par-allel kinematic H’-gantry structures linked with a miniature Ball Screw-Spline mecha-nism. The resulting structure is capable of performing four degrees-of-freedom (DOF) displacements along the three Cartesian axes X, Y and Z as well as a rotation W around the Z axis. The size and the other geometries of the DOHMAN robot aim to fit into the microfactory concept (TUT-μF) developed at Tampere University of Technology. For position control and visual servoing of the robot, an additional module was de-signed and implemented. Custom design of mechanical parts along with the selection of off-the-shelf components was done for building the robot prototype. The chapters and the appendix of this thesis thoroughly explain the design decisions and the implementa-tion. During the design development a new innovative homing strategy for linear Z and angular W axes was suggested and later implemented. This innovative homing provides efficient use of space for mounting the limit switches, avoiding huge loss in the overall Z-axis movement, and significantly reduces the cabling issues in the moving structure. Besides the innovative homing, other advantages of DOHMAN are distributed actuation and homogeneous workspace. The distributed actuation decreases the overall mass of the moving structure and also reduces the cabling within the overall mechanical system. The consistency in the workspace eases the control of the robot because there are no regions to avoid while moving the end effector