Generalized Method Of Designing Unmanned Remotely Operated Complexes Based On The System Approach

Self-propelled underwater systems belong to the effective means of marine robotics. The advantages of their use include the ability to perform underwater work in real time with high quality and without risk to the life of a human operator. At present, the design of such complexes is not formalized and is carried out separately for each of the components – a remotely operated vehicle, a tether-cable and cable winch, a cargo device and a control and energy device. As a result, the time spent on design increases and its quality decreases. The system approach to the design of remotely operated complexes ensures that the features of the interaction of the components of the complex are taken into account when performing its main operating modes. In this paper, the system interaction between the components of the complex is proposed to take into account in the form of decomposition of “underwater tasks (mission) – underwater technology of its implementation – underwater work on the selected technology – task for the executive mechanism of the complex” operations. With this approach, an information base is formed for the formation of a list of mechanisms of the complex, the technical appearance of its components is being formed, which is important for the early design stages. Operative, creative and engineering phases of the design of the complex are proposed. For each phase, a set of works has been formulated that cover all the components of the complex and use the author's existence equations for these components as a tool for system analysis of technical solutions.The perspective of the scientific task of the creative phase to create accurate information models of the functioning of the components of the complex and models to support the adoption of design decisions based on a systematic approach is shown.The obtained results form the theoretical basis for finding effective technical solutions in the early stages of designing remotely operated complexes and for automating the design with the assistance of modern applied computer research and design packages

A role-based conceptual framework for teaching robotic construction technologies to architects

In the last 30 years, there has been increasing interest in the adoption of robotics in the construction industry and more recently in architecture. Cutting edge technologies are often pioneered in industries such as automotive, aeronautical and ship building, and take decades to filter into the hands of architects. If this is to change, architects need to be better educated in the field of robotic construction technology. This research catalogues robotic construction technology currently being used by architects and discusses the motivations that drive architects to use this technology. This catalogue includes an interview with architect Dr Simon Weir and investigates his motivation for using robotic construction technologies on a project for an Aboriginal community in central Australia. Existing frameworks for classifying robotic construction technologies are reviewed and assessed for their suitability for use teaching architecture students about these technologies. This leads to the development of a new conceptual framework for teaching architecture students about robotic construction technology. This conceptual framework classifies the technology according to the role it plays in the construction process, which makes the information more accessible to architects. The developed conceptual framework is implemented by teaching a class of students from the Master of Architecture course at the University of Sydney. Results from this class reveal outcomes for further development of the implementation of the framework into the classroom. A revised course structure is presented along with an appropriate hybrid robotic system for teaching architecture students about robotic construction technology

A comparison of processing techniques for producing prototype injection moulding inserts.

This project involves the investigation of processing techniques for producing low-cost moulding inserts used in the particulate injection moulding (PIM) process. Prototype moulds were made from both additive and subtractive processes as well as a combination of the two. The general motivation for this was to reduce the entry cost of users when considering PIM. PIM cavity inserts were first made by conventional machining from a polymer block using the pocket NC desktop mill. PIM cavity inserts were also made by fused filament deposition modelling using the Tiertime UP plus 3D printer. The injection moulding trials manifested in surface finish and part removal defects. The feedstock was a titanium metal blend which is brittle in comparison to commodity polymers. That in combination with the mesoscale features, small cross-sections and complex geometries were considered the main problems. For both processing methods, fixes were identified and made to test the theory. These consisted of a blended approach that saw a combination of both the additive and subtractive processes being used. The parts produced from the three processing methods are investigated and their respective merits and issues are discussed

Reducing risk in pre-production investigations through undergraduate engineering projects.

This poster is the culmination of final year Bachelor of Engineering Technology (B.Eng.Tech) student projects in 2017 and 2018. The B.Eng.Tech is a level seven qualification that aligns with the Sydney accord for a three-year engineering degree and hence is internationally benchmarked. The enabling mechanism of these projects is the industry connectivity that creates real-world projects and highlights the benefits of the investigation of process at the technologist level. The methodologies we use are basic and transparent, with enough depth of technical knowledge to ensure the industry partners gain from the collaboration process. The process we use minimizes the disconnect between the student and the industry supervisor while maintaining the academic freedom of the student and the commercial sensitivities of the supervisor. The general motivation for this approach is the reduction of the entry cost of the industry to enable consideration of new technologies and thereby reducing risk to core business and shareholder profits. The poster presents several images and interpretive dialogue to explain the positive and negative aspects of the student process

RAF | A framework for symbiotic agencies in robotic – aided fabrication

The research presented in this paper utilizes industrial robotic arms and new material technologies to model and explore a different conceptual framework for ‘robotic-aided fabrication’ based on material formation processes, collaboration, and feedback loops. Robotic-aided fabrication as a performative design process needs to develop and demonstrate itself through projects that operate at a discrete level, emphasizing the role of the different agents and prioritizing their relationships over their autonomy. It encourages a process where the robot, human and material are not simply operational entities but a related whole. In the pre-actual state of this agenda, the definition and understanding of agencies and the inventory of their relations is more relevant than their implementation. Three test scenarios are described using human designers, phase-changing materials, and a six-axis industrial robotic arm with an external sensor. The common thread running through the three scenarios is the facilitation of interaction within a digital fabrication process. The process starts with a description of the different agencies and their potentiality before any relation is formed. Once the contributions of each agent are understood they start to form relations with different degrees of autonomy. A feedback loop is introduced to create negotiation opportunities that can result in a rich and complex design process. The paper concludes with speculation on the advantages and possible limitations of semi-organic design methods through the emergence of patterns of interaction between the material, machine and designer resulting in new vistas towards how design is conceived, developed, and realised

How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRR’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a “total approach to rehabilitation”, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970’s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program

Fabricate 2020

Fabricate 2020 is the fourth title in the FABRICATE series on the theme of digital fabrication and published in conjunction with a triennial conference (London, April 2020). The book features cutting-edge built projects and work-in-progress from both academia and practice. It brings together pioneers in design and making from across the fields of architecture, construction, engineering, manufacturing, materials technology and computation. Fabricate 2020 includes 32 illustrated articles punctuated by four conversations between world-leading experts from design to engineering, discussing themes such as drawing-to-production, behavioural composites, robotic assembly, and digital craft

Design behaviors : programming the material world for responsive architecture

The advances of material science, coupled with computation and digital technologies, and applied to the architectural discipline have brought to life unprecedented possibilities for the design and making of responsive, collectively created and intelligent environments. Over the last two decades, research and applications of novel active materials, together with digital technologies such as Ubiquitous Computing, Human-Computer Interaction, and Artificial Intelligence, have introduced a model of Materially Responsive Architecture that presents unique possibilities for designing novel performances and behaviors of the architectural Beyond the use of mechanical systems, sensors, actuators or wires, often plugged into traditional materials to animate space, this dissertation proves that matter itself, can be the agent to achieve monitoring, reaction or adaptation with no need of any additional mechanics, electrical or motorized systems. Materials, therefore, become bits and information uniting with the digital world, while computational processes, such as algorithmic control, circular feedback, input or output, both drive and are driven by the morphogenetic capacities of matter, uniting, therefore, with the material world. Through the applications and implications of Materially Responsive Architecture we are crossing a threshold in design where physicality follows and reveals information through time and through dynamic configurations. Design is not limited to a finalised form but rather associated to a performance, where the final formal outcome consists in a series of animated and organic topologies rather than static geometries and structures. This new paradigm, is referred to, in this thesis, as the Design Behaviors paradigm (in the double sense of "behaviors of design" and "designing behaviors"), and is characterized by unique exchanges and dialogues between users and the environment, facilitated by the conjunction of human, material and computational intelligence. Buildings, objects and spaces are able to reconfigure themselves, in both atomic and macro scale, to support environmental changes and users' needs, behavioral and occupational patterns. At the same time the Design Behaviors paradigm places not only matter and the environment at the center of design and morphogenesis, but also the users, that become active participants of their built environment and play the final creative role. This paradigm shift, boosts new relations among the human's perception and body and the inhabited space. The new design paradigm is also a new cultural one, in which statics, repetition and Cartesian grids, traditionally related with safety, orientation and comfort, give way to motion, unpredictability and organic principles of evolution. Materially Responsive Architecture and the Design Behaviors paradigm define uniquely enhanced "environments" and "ecologies" where human, nature, artifice and technology collectively and evolutionally co-exist within a framework of increased consciousness and awareness. This thesis argues that, while there is no doubt that our future cities will consist in an extensive layer of distributed sensors, actuators and digital interfaces, they will also consist in an additional layer of novel materials, that are dynamic and soft, rather than rigid and hard, able to sense as sensors, actuate as motors, and be programmed as a software. The new materiality of our cities relies on the advances of material science, coupled with the cybernetic and computational power, and can be actuated by the environment to change states (Re-Active Matter), can be controlled by the users to respond (Co-Active Matter), and eventually can be designed and programmed to learn and evolve as living organisms do (Self-Active Matter). The physical space of the city is, thus, the seamless intertwining of digital and material content, becoming an active agent in the dynamic relationship between the environment and humans.Los avances en la ciencia de los materiales, junto con la computación y las tecnologías digitales, y aplicados a la disciplina arquitectónica, han dado vida a posibilidades sin precedentes para el diseño y la realización de entornos responsivos, inteligentes y creados de forma colectiva. En las últimas dos décadas, la investigación y aplicación de nuevos materiales activos junto con tecnologías digitales como la Computación Ubicua, la Interacción Hombre-Ordenador y la Inteligencia Artificial, han introducido el modelo de Materially Responsive Architecture (Arquitectura Materialmente Responsiva), que presenta posibilidades únicas para el diseño de nuevas actuaciones y comportamientos del espacio arquitectónico. Más allá del uso de sistemas mecánicos, sensores, o motores, a menudo conectados a materiales tradicionales para activar el espacio, esta disertación demuestra que la materia en sí misma puede ser el agente que consiga monitoreo o reactividad sin necesidad de añadir ningún sistema mecánico o eléctrico. Los materiales, en este caso, se convierten en bits e información fundiéndose con el mundo digital, mientras que los procesos computacionales, como el feedback circular y el input o output, a la vez impulsan y son impulsados por la capacidad morfogenética de la materia, uniéndose, por lo tanto, con el mundo material. A través de las aplicaciones y las implicaciones de la Materially Responsive Architecture, estamos cruzando un umbral en el diseño donde el mundo físico sigue y revela información a través de configuraciones dinámicas en el tiempo. El diseño no se limita a una forma finalizada, sino se relaciona a una performance, donde el resultado formal final consiste en una serie de topologías orgánicas y animadas en lugar de estructuras y geometrías estáticas. En esta tesis doctoral, este nuevo paradigma se denomina paradigma de Design Behaviours (en el doble sentido de "comportamientos de diseño" y de "diseño de comportamientos") y se caracteriza por intercambios únicos entre el usuario y el entorno, facilitados por la conjunción de inteligencia humana, material y computacional. Los edificios, objetos y espacios pueden reconfigurarse a sí mismos, tanto a nivél atómico como a macro escala, para responder a los cambios ambientales y a las necesidades de los usuarios. Al mismo tiempo, el paradigma Design Behaviors coloca en el centro del diseño y la morfogénesis no solo la materia y el medio ambiente, sino también a los usuarios, que se convierten en participantes de su entorno construido y desempeñan el papel creativo final. El nuevo paradigma define "entornos" y "ecologías" aumentados de manera singular, donde el ser humano, la naturaleza, el artificio y la tecnología coexisten de manera colectiva y evolutiva dentro de un marco de mayor conciencia consciente. El nuevo paradigma de diseño es también un nuevo paradigma cultural, en el que las redes estáticas, repetitivas y cartesianas, tradicionalmente relacionadas con la seguridad, la orientación y el confort, dan paso al movimiento, la imprevisibilidad y la evolución orgánica. Esta tesis sostiene que, si bien no hay duda de que nuestras ciudades futuras consistirán en una capa extensa de sensores distribuidos e interfaces digitales, también contarán con una capa adicional de materiales dinámicos y suaves, en lugar de rígidos y duros, capaces de sentir como sensores, actuar como motores y ser programados como un software. La nueva materialidad de nuestras ciudades puede ser activada por el medio ambiente para cambiar su estado (Re-Active Matter), puede ser controlada por los usuarios para responderles (Co-Active Matter), y eventualmente puede diseñarse y programarse para aprender y evolucionar por sí misma así como lo hacen los organismos vivos (Self-Active Matter). El espacio físico de la ciudad es, por lo tanto, el entrelazado holístico entre contenido digital y material, convirtiéndose en un agente activo en la relación dinámica entre el medio ambiente y los humanos