Related papers: Towards artificial muscles
Fundamental questions on the nature of matter and energy have found answers thanks to the use of particle accelerators. Societal applications, such as cancer treatment or cancer imaging, illustrate the impact of accelerators in our current…
Design of robotic systems that safely and efficiently operate in uncertain operational conditions, such as rehabilitation and physical assistance robots, remains an important challenge in the field. Current methods for the design of energy…
In the world of upper limb prostheses, few companies dominate the majority of the market. They propose different kinds of hand, wrist and elbow prostheses but their control is often difficult to understand by the patients. We have decided…
The discovery of configurational forces acting on elastic structures and its initial applications are reviewed. Configurational forces are related to the possibility that an elastic structure can change its configuration, thus inducing a…
Soft robotics have gained increased attention from the robotic community due to their unique features such as compliance and human safety. Impressive amount of soft robotic prototypes have shown their superior performance over their rigid…
We experimentally investigate the drag force exerted by a suspension of light-induced active particles (APs) on a translating and beating idealized flagellum-shaped object realized through negative phototactic interactions with the APs. We…
Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) is a technique to evoke muscle contraction through low-energy electrical signals. FES can animate paralysed limbs. Yet, an open challenge remains on how to apply FES to achieve desired movements. This…
Electro-active materials are classified as electrostrictive and piezoelectric materials. They deform under the action of an external electric field. Piezoelectric material, as a special class of active materials, can produce an internal…
In this research, attempts are made to conduct concrete muscle fatigue analysis of arbitrary motions on OpenSim, a digital human modeling platform. A plug-in is written on the base of a muscle fatigue model, which makes it possible to…
Deployable structures, essential across various engineering applications ranging from umbrellas to satellites, are evolving to include soft, morphable designs where geometry drives transformation. However, a major challenge for soft…
Wearable and legged robot designers face multiple challenges when choosing actuation. Traditional fully actuated designs using electric motors are multifunctional but oversized and inefficient for bearing conservative loads and for being…
We develop a computational method based on an Eulerian field called the "reference map", which relates the current location of a material point to its initial. The reference map can be discretized to permit finite-difference simulation of…
Electromagnetic relays and solenoid actuators are commonly used for their bistable behavior, which allows for switching between two states in electrical, pneumatic, or hydraulic circuits, among other applications. Although there has been…
Most traditional robotic mechanisms feature inelastic joints that are unable to robustly handle large deformations and off-axis moments. As a result, the applied loads are transferred rigidly throughout the entire structure. The…
Soft grippers, for stable grasping of objects, with high compliance could be considered a suitable candidate for replacement of conventional rigid grippers, and in recent years, they have been emerging exponentially in industries. Not only…
Based on the idea of variable stiffness mechanisms, a variety of such mechanisms is shown in this work. Specifically, 2-DOF parallel kinematic machines equipped with redundant actuators and non-linear springs in the actuated joints are…
Many soft-body organisms found in nature flourish underwater. Similarly, soft robots are potentially well-suited for underwater environments partly because the problematic effects of gravity, friction, and harmonic oscillations are less…
In this work we investigate two distinct extensions of the deformation procedure introduced in former works on deformed defects. The first extension deals with the use of deformation functions which can assume complex values, and the second…
The irregularity of particle motions during quasi-static deformation is investigated using discrete element (DEM) simulations of sphere and sphere-cluster assemblies. A total of three types of interparticle movements are analyzed: relative…
Wearable electronics are emerging as essential tools for health monitoring, haptic feedback, and human-computer interactions. While stable contact at the device-body interface is critical for these applications, it remains challenging due…