A Continuum Model for Fiber-Reinforced Soft Robot Actuators

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Sedal ◽  
Daniel Bruder ◽  
Joshua Bishop-Moser ◽  
Ram Vasudevan ◽  
Sridhar Kota

Fiber-reinforced elastomeric enclosures (FREEs) generate sophisticated motions, when pressurized, including axial rotation, extension, and compression, and serve as fundamental building blocks for soft robots in a variety of applications. However, most modeling techniques employed by researchers do not capture the key characteristics of FREEs to enable development of robust design and control schemes. Accurate and computationally efficient models that capture the nonlinearity of fibers and elastomeric components are needed. This paper presents a continuum model that captures the nonlinearities of the fiber and elastomer components as well as nonlinear relationship between applied pressure, deformation, and output forces and torque. One of the key attributes of this model is that it captures the behavior of FREEs in a computationally tractable manner with a minimum burden on experimental parameter determination. Without losing generality of the model, we validate it for a FREE with one fiber family, which is the simplest system exhibiting a combination of elongation and twist when pressurized. Experimental data in multiple kinematic configurations show agreement between our model prediction and the moments that the actuators generate. The model can be used to not only determine operational parameters but also to solve inverse problems, i.e., in design synthesis.

Author(s):  
Audrey Sedal ◽  
Daniel Bruder ◽  
Joshua Bishop-Moser ◽  
Ram Vasudevan ◽  
Sridhar Kota

For soft robots to be utilized in medical devices, locomotion, industrial automation, and a number of other fields, they require accurate and computationally efficient models that capture both the kinetic behavior and inherent non-linearity. Fiber reinforcement enables soft robots to create useful motions, such as rotation, but poses additional complexity in modeling. The purpose of this paper is to present a constitutive model that relates the kinematic behaviour of a pneumatic fiber-reinforced soft actuator with its torsional loading. This model has the advantage of requiring minimal experimental parameter determination, being inclusive of torsional loads, without requiring large-scale computing systems. Experimental data in multiple kinematic configurations shows agreement between the models moment prediction and the moments that the actuators generate.


2019 ◽  
pp. 027836491987949 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Sedal ◽  
Alan Wineman ◽  
R. Brent Gillespie ◽  
C. David Remy

Successful soft robot modeling approaches appearing in the recent literature have been based on a variety of distinct theories, including traditional robotic theory, continuum mechanics, and machine learning. Though specific modeling techniques have been developed for and validated against already realized systems, their strengths and weaknesses have not been explicitly compared against each other. In this article, we show how three distinct model structures, a lumped-parameter model, a continuum mechanical model, and a neural network, compare in capturing the gross trends and specific features of the force generation of soft robotic actuators. In particular, we study models for fiber-reinforced elastomeric enclosures (FREEs), which are a popular choice of soft actuator and that are used in several soft articulated systems, including soft manipulators, exoskeletons, grippers, and locomoting soft robots. We generated benchmark data by testing eight FREE samples that spanned broad design and kinematic spaces and compared the models on their ability to predict the loading–deformation relationships of these samples. This comparison shows the predictive capabilities of each model on individual actuators and each model’s generalizability across the design space. While the neural net achieved the highest peak performance, the first principles-based models generalized best across all actuator design parameters tested. The results highlight the essential roles of mathematical structure and experimental parameter determination in building high-performing, generalizable soft actuator models with varying effort invested in system identification.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. 1348-1353
Author(s):  
Huanhuan Qu ◽  
Baixue Li ◽  
Jingyi Yang ◽  
Huaiwen Liang ◽  
Meixia Li ◽  
...  

Background: Disaccharide core 1 (Galβ1-3GalNAc) is a common O-glycan structure in nature. Biochemical studies have confirmed that the formation of the core 1 structure is an important initial step in O-glycan biosynthesis and it is of great importance for human body. Objective: Our study will provide meaningful and useful sights for O-glycan synthesis and their bioassay. And all the synthetic glycosides would be used as intermediate building blocks in the scheme developed for oligosaccharide construction. Methods: In this article, we firstly used chemical procedures to prepare core 1 and its derivative, and a novel disaccharide was efficiently synthesized. The structures of the synthesized compounds were elucidated and confirmed by 1H NMR, 13C NMR and MS. Then we employed three human gut symbionts belonging to Bacteroidetes, a predominantphyla in the distal gut, as models to study the bioactivity of core 1 and its derivative on human gut microbiota. Results: According to our results, both core 1 and derivative could support the growth of B. fragilis, especially the core 1 derivative, while failed to support the growth of B. thetaiotaomicron and B. ovatus. Conclusion: This suggested that the B. fragilis might have the specificity glycohydrolase to cut the glycosidic bond for acquiring monosaccharide.


Metals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 818
Author(s):  
Jonas Richter ◽  
Moritz Kuhtz ◽  
Andreas Hornig ◽  
Mohamed Harhash ◽  
Heinz Palkowski ◽  
...  

Metallic (M) and polymer (P) materials as layered hybrid metal-polymer-metal (MPM) sandwiches offer a wide range of applications by combining the advantages of both material classes. The interfaces between the materials have a considerable impact on the resulting mechanical properties of the composite and its structural performance. Besides the fact that the experimental methods to determine the properties of the single constituents are well established, the characterization of interface failure behavior between dissimilar materials is very challenging. In this study, a mixed numerical–experimental approach for the determination of the mode I energy release rate is investigated. Using the example of an interface between a steel (St) and a thermoplastic polyolefin (PP/PE), the process of specimen development, experimental parameter determination, and numerical calibration is presented. A modified design of the Double Cantilever Beam (DCB) is utilized to characterize the interlaminar properties and a tailored experimental setup is presented. For this, an inverse calibration method is used by employing numerical studies using cohesive elements and the explicit solver of LS-DYNA based on the force-displacement and crack propagation results.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhi-Gang Yin ◽  
Xiong-Wei Liu ◽  
Hui-Juan Wang ◽  
Min Zhang ◽  
Xiong-Li Liu ◽  
...  

A highly efficient synthesis of structurally diverse ortho-acylphenol–diindolylmethane hybrids 3 using carboxylic acid-activated chromones as versatile synthetic building blocks is reported here for the first time, through 1,4-nucleophilic addition and followed by a decarboxylation and pyrone ring opening reaction process.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (a1) ◽  
pp. C1223-C1223
Author(s):  
Jason Benedict ◽  
Ian Walton ◽  
Dan Patel ◽  
Jordan Cox

Metal-organic Frameworks (MOFs) remain an extremely active area of research given the wide variety of potential applications and the enormous diversity of structures that can be created from their constituent building blocks. While MOFs are typically employed as passive materials, next-generation materials will exhibit structural and/or electronic changes in response to applied external stimuli including light, charge, and pH. Herein we present recent results in which advanced photochromic diarylethenes are combined with MOFs through covalent and non-covalent methods to create photo-responsive permanently porous crystalline materials. This presentation will describe the design, synthesis, and characterization of next-generation photo-switchable diarylethene based ligands which are subsequently used to photo-responsive MOFs. These UBMOF crystals are, by design, isostructural with previously reported non-photoresponsive frameworks which enables a systematic comparison of their physical and chemical properties. While the photoswitching of the isolated ligand in solution is fully reversible, the cycloreversion reaction is suppressed in the UBMOF single crystalline phase. Spectroscopic evidence for thermally induced cycloreversion will be presented, as well as a detailed analysis addressing the limits of X-ray diffraction techniques applied to these systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aboubakar Nasser Samatin Njikam ◽  
Huan Zhao

This paper introduces an extremely lightweight (with just over around two hundred thousand parameters) and computationally efficient CNN architecture, named CharTeC-Net (Character-based Text Classification Network), for character-based text classification problems. This new architecture is composed of four building blocks for feature extraction. Each of these building blocks, except the last one, uses 1 × 1 pointwise convolutional layers to add more nonlinearity to the network and to increase the dimensions within each building block. In addition, shortcut connections are used in each building block to facilitate the flow of gradients over the network, but more importantly to ensure that the original signal present in the training data is shared across each building block. Experiments on eight standard large-scale text classification and sentiment analysis datasets demonstrate CharTeC-Net’s superior performance over baseline methods and yields competitive accuracy compared with state-of-the-art methods, although CharTeC-Net has only between 181,427 and 225,323 parameters and weighs less than 1 megabyte.


2011 ◽  
Vol 83 (12) ◽  
pp. 2153-2169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bozhi Tian ◽  
Charles M. Lieber

Semiconductor nanowires (NWs) represent a unique system for exploring phenomena at the nanoscale and are expected to play a critical role in future electronic, optoelectronic, and miniaturized biomedical devices. Modulation of the composition and geometry of nanostructures during growth could encode information or function, and realize novel applications beyond the conventional lithographical limits. This review focuses on the fundamental science aspects of the bottom-up paradigm, which are synthesis and physical property characterization of semiconductor NWs and NW heterostructures, as well as proof-of-concept device concept demonstrations, including solar energy conversion and intracellular probes. A new NW materials synthesis is discussed and, in particular, a new “nano-tectonic” approach is introduced that provides iterative control over the NW nucleation and growth for constructing 2D kinked NW superstructures. The use of radial and axial p-type/intrinsic/n-type (p-i-n) silicon NW (Si-NW) building blocks for solar cells and nanoscale power source applications is then discussed. The critical benefits of such structures and recent results are described and critically analyzed, together with some of the diverse challenges and opportunities in the near future. Finally, results are presented on several new directions, which have recently been exploited in interfacing biological systems with NW devices.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document