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This study presents an integrated microfluidic system combining two techniques, including an optically-induced dielectrophoresis (ODEP) module for manipulation of drug particles and an UV-direct-writing module capable of patterning of hydrogel, for applications of digital drug cocktails. This system was able to provide an automatic and customized production of drug cocktails. Experimental results...
Digital microfluidics is an emerging technology that provide fluidic-handling capabilities on a chip. One of the most important issues to be considered when conducting experiments on the corresponding biochips is the routing of droplets. A recent variant of biochips uses a micro-electrode-dot-array (MEDA) which yields a finer controllability of the droplets. Although this new technology allows for...
Biological and bioinspired swimmers move by shape actuation. Great progress has been made in understanding the direct control of shape variables for locomotory purposes. However, indirect control and soft actuation of the shape variables via actuation of the fluid medium is less well explored. Here, we examine the nonlinear coupling between shape variables and locomotion in a model system that consists...
In this paper, we introduce a systematic process of design, simulation and experimental validation of a manipulator based on the honeycomb pneumatic network (HPN) structure. The HPN structure shows potential in achieving balance between flexibility and load bearing capacity, which overcomes the shortcoming of pneumatic networks in strength. To reach the best performance of both features above, we...
Muscle cell actuators are composed of skeletal muscle cells and collagen intercellular matrix. Muscle cells adhere to collagen fibers and contraction along with the direction of collagen fiber. Collagen fibers in a muscle cell actuator transmit contraction force of each muscle cells along longitudinal direction. In order to improve contraction force of muscle cell actuators, it is very important to...
Tendon sheath actuation is widely used in the minimally invasive surgery (MIS) robotic system, particularly in the single port laparoscopy (SPL) and the natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery (NOTES) robots. The force propagation from the proximal end to distal end is the most important characters for the tendon sheath actuation, and the friction is a major problem. In this paper, a classical...
We introduce a novel bags-of-features framework based on relative position descriptors, modeling both spatial relations and shape information between the pairwise structural subparts of objects. First, we propose a hierarchical approach for the decomposition of complex objects into structural subparts, as well as their description using the concept of Force Histogram Decomposition (FHD). Then, an...
Snake-like robot which has active joints and thruster mechanisms has been proven to have its high mobility on narrow and rough terrain because of its slim and long trunk. However, larger space than its slim trunk is necessary for snakelike robot to turn. Thus, in order to improve the mobility of snake-like robot, turning method which makes turning radius smaller is needed. In this paper, a new turning...
This research investigated the effects of three different drawbead shapes under three blankholder forces on the non-symmetrical deep drawing metal workpiece. In the study, simulations were carried out on three grades of cold rolled steel sheets (i.e. SPCC, SPCD and SPCE) using the finite element method (FEM) and the actual experimentations performed for comparison. The experimental drawbead shapes...
Reducing the grasp candidates for unknown object grasping while maintaining grasp stability is the goal of this paper. In this paper, we propose an efficient and straight forward unknown object grasping method by using concavities of the unknown objects to significantly reduce the grasp candidates. Shortest path concavity is first employed to work out the concavity value for every vertex of the unknown...
To realize the shape adaptability and stable grasping for fruit mechanical picking, a design scheme of end-effector with tendon-driving is proposed based on the underactuated principle. The statics analysis of finger and the design rules for improving grasp stability is researched, as well as the main structure parameters of the end-effector are determined. Analysis and calculation results show that...
This paper presents the results of research of plunger shape influence on the time response and attraction force of DC solenoid electromagnetic actuator depending on the length of the working gap. The plunger shape optimization has been performed on two-dimensional (2D) axial-symmetric model using a genetic algorithm, while the magnetic subsystem of electromagnetic actuator is analyzed by the finite...
Shape and dynamic behavior of nonmagnetic materials immersed in magnetic nanofluid was analyzed by using the level-set method for two-phase flow driven by the magnetic force density. To verify suitable magnetic force density, the total forces due to the surface and body force density methods were compared with experimental results obtained from the rising bubble setup with a sensing coil and cylindrical...
In recent years, several researchers focused their work on the mechanisms to protect the UAV from the dangerous collision with obstacles particularly the application of a spherical shell. However, this mechanism has some drawbacks when used in real-world mission especially in an outdoor environment. In the presence of wind, the spherical shell will experience significant air drag that will affect...
A closed elastica, which is an elastic rod whose both ends are fixed to prescribed two places, can be found in various situations in robotics. In this paper, we investigate validity of the discretized spatial model of a closed elastica. The discretized closed elastica model can be regarded as a series of rigid bodies connected with passive elastic joints physically, and represented by a set of nonlinear...
In this paper, we propose a new method for implementing a rotational nonlinear spring with user defined profile, based on the combination of a linear spring with a nonlinear transmission mechanism. The proposed structure consists of a non-circular cam, a roller which moves along outer circumference of the cam, and a stretched translational linear spring which is connected between center of the cam...
This paper describes the development of one DoF robotic hand that makes human laugh by tickling through rubbing underarm. Laughter is attracting research attention because it enhances health by treating or preventing mental diseases. However, laughter has not been used effectively in healthcare because the mechanism of laughter is complicated and is yet to be fully understood. The development of a...
In this paper is proposed an optimized solution of DC electromagnet using design of experiments (DOE) and FEM. Before optimization, the technique of screening was applied to determine the most influent geometrical parameters on the static force characteristic. For this purpose, the response function was chosen to be the root square of the average of squares of the relative force for five values of...
The safety of working on walls has been improved by several adsorption mechanisms most of which sustain the absorption by pumps or other actuators. This research proposes an alternative method (a spring-suspended suction cup with a buckled plate spring) that can be attached for long durations without any vacuum pumping system. The negative pressure of the spring suspended suction cup is analyzed and...
In this paper, we present deformable configuration control — a fully distributed algorithm that allows multiple robots to deform their configuration to avoid various shapes of obstacles while maintaining connectivity. Robots contacted with an obstacle first estimate the width of an obstacle by sharing bumped status of individual robots, and choose an appropriate obstacle avoidance scenarios between...
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