Wearable haptic systems for the fingertip and the hand: taxonomy, review and perspectives

In the last decade, we have witnessed a drastic change in the form factor of audio and vision technologies, from heavy and grounded machines to lightweight devices that naturally fit our bodies. However, only recently, haptic systems have started to be designed with wearability in mind. The wearability of haptic systems enables novel forms of communication, cooperation, and integration between humans and machines. Wearable haptic interfaces are capable of communicating with the human wearers during their interaction with the environment they share, in a natural and yet private way. This paper presents a taxonomy and review of wearable haptic systems for the fingertip and the hand, focusing on those systems directly addressing wearability challenges. The paper also discusses the main technological and design challenges for the development of wearable haptic interfaces, and it reports on the future perspectives of the field. Finally, the paper includes two tables summarizing the characteristics and features of the most representative wearable haptic systems for the fingertip and the hand

Performance of modified jatropha oil in combination with hexagonal boron nitride particles as a bio-based lubricant for green machining

This study evaluates the machining performance of newly developed modified jatropha oils (MJO1, MJO3 and MJO5), both with and without hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) particles (ranging between 0.05 and 0.5 wt%) during turning of AISI 1045 using minimum quantity lubrication (MQL). The experimental results indicated that, viscosity improved with the increase in MJOs molar ratio and hBN concentration. Excellent tribological behaviours is found to correlated with a better machining performance were achieved by MJO5a with 0.05 wt%. The MJO5a sample showed the lowest values of cutting force, cutting temperature and surface roughness, with a prolonged tool life and less tool wear, qualifying itself to be a potential alternative to the synthetic ester, with regard to the environmental concern

Robotics 2010

Without a doubt, robotics has made an incredible progress over the last decades. The vision of developing, designing and creating technical systems that help humans to achieve hard and complex tasks, has intelligently led to an incredible variety of solutions. There are barely technical fields that could exhibit more interdisciplinary interconnections like robotics. This fact is generated by highly complex challenges imposed by robotic systems, especially the requirement on intelligent and autonomous operation. This book tries to give an insight into the evolutionary process that takes place in robotics. It provides articles covering a wide range of this exciting area. The progress of technical challenges and concepts may illuminate the relationship between developments that seem to be completely different at first sight. The robotics remains an exciting scientific and engineering field. The community looks optimistically ahead and also looks forward for the future challenges and new development

Nature-inspired soft robotics: On articial cilia and magnetic locomotion

Inspired by micro-organisms in nature, people imagined using micro-scale soft robots to work inside the human body for therapeutic drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, or diagnostic biochemical sensing. To create these robots is challenging due to their small size, viscosity environment, and soft constituting materials. In addition, the mechanisms of operation are quite different from the conventional rigid macro-scale robots that we are familiar with. In this PhD project, we focused on the computational analysis and design of micro-scale soft robots. Working closely with experimental groups, we studied artificial cilia and micro-swimmers that can realize particle manipulation, fluid transport, fluid mixing, or magnetic locomotion. Various cilia systems are considered, including soft inflatable cilia which could be controlled individually and programmable magnetic cilia featuring phase shifts and collective metachronal patterns. We also analyze micro-swimmers that are soft and adaptive in confined spaces. Driven by different external magnetic fields, the swimmer's motion can be changed between undulation crawling, undulation swimming, and helical crawling. By using computational modeling, we analyze the transport mechanisms of the soft robots and study the effect of different parameters to provide guidelines for the design of the robots in specific applications. By studying the physical mechanisms of micro-organisms in nature, we are not only able to understand more clearly their functional behaviour, it also opens the possibility of biomimetic design of soft robotic cilia and micro-swimmers