Related papers: High Performance Electrostatic Sensors and Actuato…
When humans physically interact with robots, we need the robots to be both safe and performant. Series elastic actuators (SEAs) fundamentally advance safety by introducing compliant actuation. On the one hand, adding a spring mitigates the…
Optical sensors are often mounted on moving platforms to aid in a variety of tasks like data collection, surveillance and navigation. This necessitates the precise control of the inertial orientation of the optical sensor line-of-sight…
Variable stiffness actuator (VSA) designs are manifold. Conventional model-based control of these nonlinear systems is associated with high effort and design-dependent assumptions. In contrast, machine learning offers a promising…
This paper presents a novel six-axis force/torque (F/T) sensor based on inductive sensing technology. Unlike conventional strain gauge-based sensors that require direct contact and external amplification, the proposed sensor utilizes…
Porous electrodes{made of hierarchically nanostructured materials{are omnipresent in various electrochemical energy technologies from batteries and supercapacitors to sensors and electrocatalysis. Modeling the system-level macroscopic…
This work presents a new fiberless soft pneumatic actuator that can work multifunctional and bidirectional, and its embedded sensors give it a self-proprioception ability. This actuator works based on the idea of employing helical pressure…
DC electric fields can combine with test mass charging and thermal dielectric voltage noise to create significant force noise acting on the drag-free test masses in the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) gravitational wave mission.…
In the context of the Large Binocular Telescope project, we present the results of force actuator calibrations performed on an adaptive secondary prototype called P45, a thin deformable glass with magnets glued onto its back.…
A self-powered system is a control technology that powers itself by harvesting energy from exogenous disturbances. This article details the design and experimental validation of a prototype self-powered vibration control system, for…
Capacitance measurement is a useful technique in studying quantum devices, as it directly probes the local particle charging properties, i.e. the system compressibility. Here we report one approach which can measure capacitance from mK to…
We study a type of port-Hamiltonian system, in which the controller or disturbance is not applied to the flow variables, but to the systems power, a scenario that appears in many practical applications. A suitable framework is provided to…
A common way to analyze electrostatic microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) actuators is to use their energy-displacement landscape. Here, we describe an alternative approach to analyze electrostatic MEMS actuators using their energy-charge…
The mechanical and electrical response of acoustophoretic microfluidic devices attached to an ac-voltage-driven piezoelectric transducer is studied by means of numerical simulations. The governing equations are formulated in a variational…
We report on a search for non-Newtonian forces that couple to mass, with a characteristic scale of ${\sim}10~\mu$m, using an optically levitated microsphere as a precision force sensor. A silica microsphere trapped in an upward-propagating,…
Developing kinesthetic haptic devices with advanced haptic rendering capabilities is challenging due to the limitations on driving mechanisms. In this study, we introduce a novel soft electrohydraulic actuator and develop a kinesthetic…
LISA is the proposed ESA-NASA gravitational wave detector in the 0.1 mHz - 0.1 Hz band. LISA Pathfinder is the down-scaled version of a single LISA arm. The arm -- named Doppler link -- can be treated as a differential accelerometer,…
The present study aims to investigate the effectiveness of plasma actuators in controlling the flow around a finite wall-mounted square cylinder (FWMSC) with a longitudinal aspect ratio of 4. The test is conducted in a small-scale closed…
The electron hopping between the two sites in a lattice is of fundamental importance in condensed matter physics. Precise control of the hopping strength allows for the prospect of manipulating the properties of electronic materials, such…
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…
Linear Hall sensors are a cost-effective alternative to optical encoders for measuring the rotor positions of actuators, with the main challenge being that they exhibit position-dependent inaccuracies resulting from manufacturing…