431 research outputs found
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Soft pneumatic actuators with integrated resistive sensors enabled by multi-material 3D printing
The concept of soft robots has garnered significant attention in recent studies due to their unique capability to interact effectively with the surrounding environment. However, as the number of innovative soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs) continues to rise, integrating traditional sensors becomes challenging due to the complex and unrestricted movements exhibited by SPA during their operation. This article explores the importance of utilising one-shot multi-material 3D printing to integrate soft force and bending sensors into SPAs. It highlights the necessity of a well-tuned and robust low-cost fabrication process to ensure the functionality of these sensors over an extended period. Fused deposition modelling (FDM) offers a cost-effective solution for embedding sensors in soft robots, directly addressing such necessity. Also, a finite element method (FEM) based on the nonlinear hyper-elastic constitutive model equipped with experimental input is developed to precisely predict the deformation and tip force of the actuators measured in experiments. The dynamic mechanical test is conducted to observe and analyse the behaviour and resistance changes of conductive thermoplastic polyurethane (CTPU) and varioShore TPU (VTPU) during a cyclic test. The flexible sensor can detect deformations in SPAs through the application of air pressure. Similarly, the force sensor exhibits the ability to detect grasping objects by detecting changes in resistance. These findings suggest that the resistance change corresponds directly to the magnitude of the mechanical stimuli applied. Thus, the device shows potential for functioning as a resistive sensor for soft actuation. Furthermore, these findings highlight the significant potential of 3D and 4D printing technology in one-shot fabrication of soft sensor-actuator robotic systems, suggesting promising applications in various fields like grippers with sensors and rehabilitation devices
A novel ratiometric fluorescent approach for the modulation of the dynamic range of lateral flow immunoassays
The majority of lateral flow assays (LFAs) use single-color optical labels to provide a qualitative naked-eye detection, however this detection method displays two important limitations. First, the use of a single-color label makes the LFA prone to results misinterpretation. Second, it does not allow the precise modulation of the sensitivity and dynamic range of the test. To overcome these limitations, a ratiometric approach is developed. In particular, using anti-HIgG functionalized red-fluorescent quantum dots on the conjugate pad (as target dependent labels) and blue-fluorescent nanoparticles fixed on the test line (as target independent reporters), it is possible to generate a wide color palette (blue, purple, pink, red) on the test line. It is believed that this strategy will facilitate the development of LFAs by easily adjusting their analytical properties to the needs required by the specific application
Information Retrieval on the World Wide Web and Active Logic: A Survey and Problem Definition
As more information becomes available on the World Wide Web (there are
currently over 4 billion pages covering most areas of human endeavor), it
becomes more difficult to provide effective search tools for information
access. Today, people access web information through two main kinds of
search interfaces: Browsers (clicking and following hyperlinks) and Query
Engines (queries in the form of a set of keywords showing the topic of
interest). The first process is tentative and time consuming and the second
may not satisfy the user because of many inaccurate and irrelevant results.
Better support is needed for expressing one's information need and returning
high quality search results by web search tools. There appears to be a need
for systems that do reasoning under uncertainty and are flexible enough to
recover from the contradictions, inconsistencies, and irregularities that such reasoning involves.
Active Logic is a formalism that has been developed with real-world
applications and their challenges in mind. Motivating its design is the
thought that one of the factors that supports the flexibility of human
reasoning is that it takes place step-wise, in time. Active Logic is one of
a family of inference engines (step-logics) that explicitly reason in time,
and incorporate a history of their reasoning as they run. This
characteristic makes Active Logic systems more flexible than traditional AI
systems and therefore more suitable for commonsense, real-world reasoning.
In this report we mainly will survey recent advances in machine learning and
crawling problems related to the web. We will review the continuum of
supervised to semi-supervised to unsupervised learning problems, highlight
the specific challenges which distinguish information retrieval in the
hypertext domain and will summarize the key areas of recent and ongoing
research. We will concentrate on topic-specific search engines, focused
crawling, and finally will propose an Information Integration Environment,
based on the Active Logic framework.
Keywords: Web Information Retrieval, Web Crawling, Focused Crawling, Machine
Learning, Active Logic
(Also UMIACS-TR-2001-69
Analysis and Verification of Service Interaction Protocols - A Brief Survey
Modeling and analysis of interactions among services is a crucial issue in
Service-Oriented Computing. Composing Web services is a complicated task which
requires techniques and tools to verify that the new system will behave
correctly. In this paper, we first overview some formal models proposed in the
literature to describe services. Second, we give a brief survey of verification
techniques that can be used to analyse services and their interaction. Last, we
focus on the realizability and conformance of choreographies.Comment: In Proceedings TAV-WEB 2010, arXiv:1009.330
The lattice structure and refinement operators for the hypothesis space bounded by a bottom clause
Room temperature plasmon laser by total internal reflection
Plasmon lasers create and sustain intense and coherent optical fields below
light's diffraction limit with the unique ability to drastically enhance
light-matter interactions bringing fundamentally new capabilities to
bio-sensing, data storage, photolithography and optical communications.
However, these important applications require room temperature operation, which
remains a major hurdle. Here, we report a room temperature semiconductor
plasmon laser with both strong cavity feedback and optical confinement to
1/20th of the wavelength. The strong feedback arises from total internal
reflection of surface plasmons, while the confinement enhances the spontaneous
emission rate by up to 20 times.Comment: 8 Page, 2 Figure
Superheated Microdrops as Cold Dark Matter Detectors
It is shown that under realistic background considerations, an improvement in
Cold Dark Matter sensitivity of several orders of magnitude is expected from a
detector based on superheated liquid droplets. Such devices are totally
insensitive to minimum ionizing radiation while responsive to nuclear recoils
of energies ~ few keV. They operate on the same principle as the bubble
chamber, but offer unattended, continuous, and safe operation at room
temperature and atmospheric pressure.Comment: 15 pgs, 4 figures include
The burden of diabetes mellitus during pregnancy in low- and middle-income countries : a systematic review
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Advances in small lasers
M.T.H was supported by an Australian Research council Future Fellowship research grant for this work. M.C.G. is grateful to the Scottish Funding Council (via SUPA) for financial support.Small lasers have dimensions or modes sizes close to or smaller than the wavelength of emitted light. In recent years there has been significant progress towards reducing the size and improving the characteristics of these devices. This work has been led primarily by the innovative use of new materials and cavity designs. This Review summarizes some of the latest developments, particularly in metallic and plasmonic lasers, improvements in small dielectric lasers, and the emerging area of small bio-compatible or bio-derived lasers. We examine the different approaches employed to reduce size and how they result in significant differences in the final device, particularly between metal- and dielectric-cavity lasers. We also present potential applications for the various forms of small lasers, and indicate where further developments are required.PostprintPeer reviewe
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