Biomass Combustion Control in Small and Medium-Scale Boilers Based on Low Cost Sensing the Trend of Carbon Monoxide Emissions

The effect of the nitrocarburizing process in pastes with heating in a chamber furnace on the struc-ture and strength characteristics of 09Cr15Ni8Al corrosion-resistant steel was investigated. The tech-nology of chemical-thermal treatment was developed, which included nitrocarburizing in pastes with heating in a chamber furnace at different holding times. The thickness of the diffusion layer and its microhardness were determined after nitrocarburizing. To determine the efficiency and select the modes of chemical-thermal treatment, tests were carried out for the investigated steel's strength characteristics. The main feature of the structure of the diffusion layers of valve steels, obtained by nitrocarburizing in the nitrogen-carbon paste, is the presence of an inhomogeneous layer with clearly distinguished zones

Novel soft bending actuator based power augmentation hand exoskeleton controlled by human intention

This article presents the development of a soft material power augmentation wearable robot using novel bending soft artificial muscles. This soft exoskeleton was developed as a human hand power augmentation system for healthy or partially hand disabled individuals. The proposed prototype serves healthy manual workers by decreasing the muscular effort needed for grasping objects. Furthermore, it is a power augmentation wearable robot for partially hand disabled or post-stroke patients, supporting and augmenting the fingers’ grasping force with minimum muscular effort in most everyday activities. This wearable robot can fit any adult hand size without the need for any mechanical system changes or calibration. Novel bending soft actuators are developed to actuate this power augmentation device. The performance of these actuators has been experimentally assessed. A geometrical kinematic analysis and mathematical output force model have been developed for the novel actuators. The performance of this mathematical model has been proven experimentally with promising results. The control system of this exoskeleton is created by hybridization between cascaded position and force closed loop intelligent controllers. The cascaded position controller is designed for the bending actuators to follow the fingers in their bending movements. The force controller is developed to control the grasping force augmentation. The operation of the control system with the exoskeleton has been experimentally validated. EMG signals were monitored during the experiments to determine that the proposed exoskeleton system decreased the muscular efforts of the wearer

Design of the model for the on-line control of the AWJ technology based on neural networks

279-287The paper focuses on the problem of prediction of surface roughness in AWJ process and contributes to the online monitoring of the hydro-abrasive material disintegration process and its possible control. The main scope of the paper is to contribute to the usage of an artificial neural network as a decisive part in the surface roughness prediction and to outline a suitable online control mechanism. In paper a series of experiments are conducted to predict surface roughness and to use phenomena like acoustic emission and vibrations that accompany the cutting process to use in a possible process control. The model of artificial neural network is created in the MATLAB environment. In total, 150 configurations of multilayer perceptron with different configurations of numbers of neurons in hidden layers are developed. Two training functions, the Bayesian regularization and the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm, are used during the network training. The results of the realized experiment have shown that the network with feedforward topology is able to predict correct value of the profile roughness parameter

Movement monitoring system for a pneumatic muscle actuator

Recent advancements in soft pneumatic robot research have demonstrated these robots’ capability to interact with the environment and humans in various ways. Their ability to move over rough terrain and grasp objects of irregular shape, regardless of position, has garnered significant interest in developing new pneumatic soft robots. Integrating industrial design with related technologies holds great promise for the future, potentially bringing about a new lifestyle and revolutionizing the industry. As robots become increasingly practical, there is a growing need for sensitivity, robustness, and efficiency improvements. It is anticipated that the development of these intelligent pneumatic soft robots will play a critical role in serving the needs of society and production shortly. The present article is concerned with developing a system for monitoring a pneumatic robot’s parameters, including a spatial coordinate system. The focus is on utilizing the relationship between the coordinates and pressure to model the movement of the soft robot within the MATLAB simulation environment