Design of a six degree-of-freedom haptic hybrid platform manipultor

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Izmir, 2010Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 97-103)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxv, 115 leavesThe word Haptic, based on an ancient Greek word called haptios, means related with touch. As an area of robotics, haptics technology provides the sense of touch for robotic applications that involve interaction with human operator and the environment. The sense of touch accompanied with the visual feedback is enough to gather most of the information about a certain environment. It increases the precision of teleoperation and sensation levels of the virtual reality (VR) applications by exerting physical properties of the environment such as forces, motions, textures. Currently, haptic devices find use in many VR and teleoperation applications. The objective of this thesis is to design a novel Six Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) haptic desktop device with a new structure that has the potential to increase the precision in the haptics technology. First, previously developed haptic devices and manipulator structures are reviewed. Following this, the conceptual designs are formed and a hybrid structured haptic device is designed manufactured and tested. Developed haptic device.s control algorithm and VR application is developed in Matlab© Simulink. Integration of the mechanism with mechanical, electromechanical and electronic components and the initial tests of the system are executed and the results are presented. According to the results, performance of the developed device is discussed and future works are addressed

Sensory augmentation with distal touch: The tactile helmet project

The Tactile Helmet is designed to augment a wearer's senses with a long range sense of touch. Tactile specialist animals such as rats and mice are capable of rapidly acquiring detailed information about their environment from their whiskers by using task-sensitive strategies. Providing similar information about the nearby environment, in tactile form, to a human operator could prove invaluable for search and rescue operations, or for partially-sighted people. Two key aspects of the Tactile Helmet are sensory augmentation, and active sensing. A haptic display is used to provide the user with ultrasonic range information. This can be interpreted in addition to, rather than instead of, visual or auditory information. Active sensing systems "are purposive and information-seeking sensory systems, involving task specific control of the sensory apparatus" [1]. The integration of an accelerometer allows the device to actively gate the delivery of sensory information to the user, depending on their movement. Here we describe the hardware, sensory transduction and characterisation of the Tactile Helmet device, before outlining potential use cases and benefits of the system. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

3D printed pneumatic soft actuators and sensors: their modeling, performance quantification, control and applications in soft robotic systems

Continued technological progress in robotic systems has led to more applications where robots and humans operate in close proximity and even physical contact in some cases. Soft robots, which are primarily made of highly compliant and deformable materials, provide inherently safe features, unlike conventional robots that are made of stiff and rigid components. These robots are ideal for interacting safely with humans and operating in highly dynamic environments. Soft robotics is a rapidly developing field exploiting biomimetic design principles, novel sensor and actuation concepts, and advanced manufacturing techniques. This work presents novel soft pneumatic actuators and sensors that are directly 3D printed in one manufacturing step without requiring postprocessing and support materials using low-cost and open-source fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers that employ an off-the-shelf commercially available soft thermoplastic poly(urethane) (TPU). The performance of the soft actuators and sensors developed is optimized and predicted using finite element modeling (FEM) analytical models in some cases. A hyperelastic material model is developed for the TPU based on its experimental stress-strain data for use in FEM analysis. The novel soft vacuum bending (SOVA) and linear (LSOVA) actuators reported can be used in diverse robotic applications including locomotion robots, adaptive grippers, parallel manipulators, artificial muscles, modular robots, prosthetic hands, and prosthetic fingers. Also, the novel soft pneumatic sensing chambers (SPSC) developed can be used in diverse interactive human-machine interfaces including wearable gloves for virtual reality applications and controllers for soft adaptive grippers, soft push buttons for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education platforms, haptic feedback devices for rehabilitation, game controllers and throttle controllers for gaming and bending sensors for soft prosthetic hands. These SPSCs are directly 3D printed and embedded in a monolithic soft robotic finger as position and touch sensors for real-time position and force control. One of the aims of soft robotics is to design and fabricate robotic systems with a monolithic topology embedded with its actuators and sensors such that they can safely interact with their immediate physical environment. The results and conclusions of this thesis have significantly contributed to the realization of this aim

Wearable Urban Mobility Assistive Device for Visually Impaired Pedestrians Using a Smartphone and a Tactile-Foot Interface

This paper reports on the progress of a wearable assistive technology (AT) device designed to enhance the independent, safe, and efficient mobility of blind and visually impaired pedestrians in outdoor environments. Such device exploits the smartphone’s positioning and computing capabilities to locate and guide users along urban settings. The necessary navigation instructions to reach a destination are encoded as vibrating patterns which are conveyed to the user via a foot-placed tactile interface. To determine the performance of the proposed AT device, two user experiments were conducted. The first one requested a group of 20 voluntary normally sighted subjects to recognize the feedback provided by the tactile-foot interface. The results showed recognition rates over 93%. The second experiment involved two blind voluntary subjects which were assisted to find target destinations along public urban pathways. Results show that the subjects successfully accomplished the task and suggest that blind and visually impaired pedes-trians might find the AT device and its concept approach useful, friendly, fast to master, and easy to use

Haptic Hand Exoskeleton for Precision Grasp Simulation

This paper outlines the design and the development of a novel robotic hand exoskeleton (HE) conceived for haptic interaction in the context of virtual reality (VR) and teleoperation (TO) applications. The device allows exerting controlled forces on fingertips of the index and thumb of the operator. The new exoskeleton features several design solutions adopted with the aim of optimizing force accuracy and resolution. The use of remote centers of motion mechanisms allows achieving a compact and lightweight design. An improved stiffness of the transmission and reduced requirements for the electromechanical actuators are obtained thanks to a novel principle for integrating speed reduction into torque transmission systems. A custom designed force sensor and integrated electronics are employed to further improve performances. The electromechanical design of the device and the experimental characterization are presented

Safe Local Navigation for Visually Impaired Users With a Time-of-Flight and Haptic Feedback Device

This paper presents ALVU (Array of Lidars and Vibrotactile Units), a contactless, intuitive, hands-free, and discreet wearable device that allows visually impaired users to detect low- and high-hanging obstacles, as well as physical boundaries in their immediate environment. The solution allows for safe local navigation in both confined and open spaces by enabling the user to distinguish free space from obstacles. The device presented is composed of two parts: a sensor belt and a haptic strap. The sensor belt is an array of time-of-flight distance sensors worn around the front of a user's waist, and the pulses of infrared light provide reliable and accurate measurements of the distances between the user and surrounding obstacles or surfaces. The haptic strap communicates the measured distances through an array of vibratory motors worn around the user's upper abdomen, providing haptic feedback. The linear vibration motors are combined with a point-loaded pretensioned applicator to transmit isolated vibrations to the user. We validated the device's capability in an extensive user study entailing 162 trials with 12 blind users. Users wearing the device successfully walked through hallways, avoided obstacles, and detected staircases.Andrea Bocelli FoundationNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant NSF IIS1226883

Soft Gloves: A Review on Recent Developments in Actuation, Sensing, Control and Applications

Interest in soft gloves, both robotic and haptic, has enormously grown over the past decade, due to their inherent compliance, which makes them particularly suitable for direct interaction with the human hand. Robotic soft gloves have been developed for hand rehabilitation, for ADLs assistance, or sometimes for both. Haptic soft gloves may be applied in virtual reality (VR) applications or to give sensory feedback in combination with prostheses or to control robots. This paper presents an updated review of the state of the art of soft gloves, with a particular focus on actuation, sensing, and control, combined with a detailed analysis of the devices according to their application field. The review is organized on two levels: a prospective review allows the highlighting of the main trends in soft gloves development and applications, and an analytical review performs an in-depth analysis of the technical solutions developed and implemented in the revised scientific research. Additional minor evaluations integrate the analysis, such as a synthetic investigation of the main results in the clinical studies and trials referred in literature which involve soft gloves

Rehabilitation Engineering

Population ageing has major consequences and implications in all areas of our daily life as well as other important aspects, such as economic growth, savings, investment and consumption, labour markets, pensions, property and care from one generation to another. Additionally, health and related care, family composition and life-style, housing and migration are also affected. Given the rapid increase in the aging of the population and the further increase that is expected in the coming years, an important problem that has to be faced is the corresponding increase in chronic illness, disabilities, and loss of functional independence endemic to the elderly (WHO 2008). For this reason, novel methods of rehabilitation and care management are urgently needed. This book covers many rehabilitation support systems and robots developed for upper limbs, lower limbs as well as visually impaired condition. Other than upper limbs, the lower limb research works are also discussed like motorized foot rest for electric powered wheelchair and standing assistance device

State-of-the-Art of Hand Exoskeleton Systems

This paper deals with the analysis of the state-of-the-art of robotic hand exoskeletons (updated at May 2011), which is intended as the first step of a designing activity. A large number of hand exoskeletons (both products and prototypes) that feature some common characteristics and many special peculiarities are reported in the literature. Indeed, in spite of very similar functionalities, different hand exoskeletons can be extremely different for the characteristics of their mechanism architectures, control systems and working principles. The aim of this paper is to provide the reader with a complete and schematic picture of the state-of-the-art of hand exoskeletons. The focus is placed on the description of the main aspects that are involved in the exoskeleton design such as the system kinematics, the actuator systems, the transmission parts and the control schemes. Additionally, the critical issues provided by the literature analysis are discussed in order to enlighten the differences and the common features of different practical solutions. This paper may help to understand both the reasons why certain solutions are proposed for the different applications and the advantages and drawbacks of the different designs proposed in the literature. The motivation of this study is the need to design a new hand exoskeleton for rehabilitation purposes