Defense Technical Information Center thesaurus

This DTIC Thesaurus provides a basic multidisciplinary subject term vocabulary used by DTIC to index and retrieve scientific and technical information from its various data bases and to aid DTIC`s users in their information storage and retrieval operations. It includes an alphabetical posting term display, a hierarchy display, and a Keywork Out of Context (KWOC) display

Dynamical systems : mechatronics and life sciences

Proceedings of the 13th Conference „Dynamical Systems - Theory and Applications" summarize 164 and the Springer Proceedings summarize 60 best papers of university teachers and students, researchers and engineers from whole the world. The papers were chosen by the International Scientific Committee from 315 papers submitted to the conference. The reader thus obtains an overview of the recent developments of dynamical systems and can study the most progressive tendencies in this field of science

Stiffness Variability in Jamming of Compliant Granules and a Case Study Application in Climbing Vertical Shafts

Jamming of granular media has been shown to possess the property of stiffness variation, transitioning from a soft to a quasi-solid state depending on the packing density of the granules. Recently, a gradual stiffness change for bending has been reported by using compliant, cubic shaped granules. Here we demonstrate that the same method and material also exhibits a gradual stiffness change for compression. As a potential application of 'compliant jamming', a bio-inspired robotic platform with jamming membranes as end effectors is designed and tasked with climbing straight vertical shafts. First, the benefit of varying the bending stiffness is investigated in the climbing task by measuring the friction force that the end effectors are applying to the shaft walls, especially if the walls are irregularly shaped. Then the role of compressive stiffness variation is explored by analyzing the performance of the robot in the climbing task, showing multi-modal properties of jamming membranes: (i) enabling a pressure sensor to detect the shaft walls, acting (ii) as grippers that actively use the irregularities of the walls to climb up by state-switching the granular material and (iii) as force dissipators that can dissipate internal forces caused by closed kinematic chains

Cumulative index to NASA Tech Briefs, 1986-1990, volumes 10-14

Tech Briefs are short announcements of new technology derived from the R&D activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These briefs emphasize information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines and are issued to encourage commercial application. This cumulative index of Tech Briefs contains abstracts and four indexes (subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief number) and covers the period 1986 to 1990. The abstract section is organized by the following subject categories: electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, physical sciences, materials, computer programs, life sciences, mechanics, machinery, fabrication technology, and mathematics and information sciences