3 research outputs found
Autonomous and reversible adhesion using elastomeric suction cups for in-vivo medical treatments
Remotely controllable and reversible adhesion is highly desirable for surgical operations: it can provide the possibility of non-invasive surgery, flexibility in fixing a patch and surgical manipulation via sticking. In our previous work, we developed a remotely controllable, ingestible, and deployable pill for use as a patch in the human stomach. In this study, we focus on magnetically facilitated reversible adhesion and develop a suction-based adhesive mechanism as a solution for non-invasive and autonomous adhesion of patches. We present
the design, model, and fabrication of a magnet-embedded
elastomeric suction cup. The suction cup can be localised,
navigated, and activated or deactivated in an autonomous way;
all realised magnetically with a pre-programmed fashion. The
use of the adhesion mechanism is demonstrated for anchoring
and carrying, for patching an internal organ surface and for
an object removal, respectively
Peltier-based freeze-thaw connector for waterborne self-assembly systems
We present a novel type of inter-module connection
mechanism for waterborne modular robotic systems. The
proposed mechanism exploits the thermoelectric effect to cool down and freeze the water between two modules thus causes them to attach to each other. We validate the feasibility of this mechanism by embedding a Peltier heat pump (m = 0.8 g) in two types of cm scale self-assembly systems, one in which the modules are free to move and one in which the modules are linked together by hinges. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed Peltier-based connector has (a) a high bond strength/weight ratio for a rather large range of temperatures and (b) is rather robust against misalignments between docking modules, making it a useful alternative to current connection mechanisms for small scale low autonomy self-assembly systems