Preliminary Investigation of the Effects of Pneumatically-Driven Soft Back Exosuit During Walking with Obstacle Avoidance

Description

Falls are known to be a common occurrence and a costly one as well, as they are the second leading cause of unintentional deaths and millions of other injuries worldwide. Falls often occur due to an increase in trunk flexion

Falls are known to be a common occurrence and a costly one as well, as they are the second leading cause of unintentional deaths and millions of other injuries worldwide. Falls often occur due to an increase in trunk flexion angle, so this experiment aims to reduce the trunk flexion received while stepping over an obstacle. To achieve this a soft actuator was attached to the trunk and pressure was sent as subjects walked and stepped over an obstacle presented on a treadmill. The pressure is meant to stiffen the back which should in theory reduce the trunk flexion angle and lower the chances of falling. In this experiment, two groups were tested: three participants from a control group (healthy young adults) and three participants from an experimental group (healthy elderly adults). Since elderly adults have the highest fall risk due to overall lack of stability, they are the experimental group and the focus for this experiment. The results from the study showed that elderly adults had a beneficial effect with the soft actuator as there was a noticeable difference in trunk flexion when the device was attached. The experiment also supported prior research that stated that trunk flexion was greater in elderly adults than younger adults. Despite the positive results, further studies should be done to prove that the soft devices influence lowering trunk flexion angle as well as to see if the device has any noticeable effect on younger adults.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

Optimization of a Lizard-Inspired Tube Inspection Robot

Description

All civilization requires some sort of infrastructure to provide an essential service. Roads, bridges, pipelines, railroads, etc. are all critical in maintaining our society, but when they fail, they pose a serious threat to the economy, public safety, and environment.

All civilization requires some sort of infrastructure to provide an essential service. Roads, bridges, pipelines, railroads, etc. are all critical in maintaining our society, but when they fail, they pose a serious threat to the economy, public safety, and environment. This is why it has become increasingly important to invest in and research the field of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) to ensure the safety and reliability of our infrastructure. This research paper delves into the optimization of a Lizard-inspired Tube Inspection (LTI) robot, with the primary focus on the inspection side of SHM through the use of Electro Magnetic Acoustic Transducer (EMAT), a Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) method. The robot is designed to inspect power plants piping for damage or defects, and its ability to detect issues early, results in improved plant efficiency, enhanced structural data collection, and increased safety. An iterative, reliable design was constructed by reducing the weight and addressing previous design flaws and then tested. Solidworks was used to calculate theoretical weight, applied stress, and displacements for the design modifications.. The overall reduction in weight was around 12.4% of the previous design. While this research successfully reduced the robot's weight and resolved issues in its design, further optimization is still necessary. Future studies should investigate the finger and friction pad design, robot control, and ways to reduce the reliance on commercial off-the-shelf parts. This will expand the robot’s inspection capabilities, making it applicable in other industries where NDT is critical to ensure structural integrity and safety, such as the pipes in oil and gas refineries, water treatment plants, and chemical processing plants, innovating the way infrastructure is monitored and maintained.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

Effectiveness of Waist Vibrotactile Feedback for Improving Standing Postural Balance

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Description
Fine control of standing postural balance is essential for completing various tasks in daily activities, which might be compromised when interacting with dynamically challenging environments (e.g., moving ground). Among various biofeedback to improve postural balance control, vibrotactile feedback has an

Fine control of standing postural balance is essential for completing various tasks in daily activities, which might be compromised when interacting with dynamically challenging environments (e.g., moving ground). Among various biofeedback to improve postural balance control, vibrotactile feedback has an advantage of providing supplementary information about balance control without disturbing other core functions (e.g., seeing and hearing). This paper investigated the effectiveness of a waist vibrotactile feedback device to improve postural control during standing balance on a dynamically moving ground simulated by a robotic balance platform. Four vibration motors of the waist device applied vibration feedback in the anterior-posterior and medio-lateral direction based on the 2-dimensional sway angle, measured by an inertia measurement unit. Experimental results with 15 healthy participants demonstrated that the waist vibrotactile feedback is effective in improving postural control, evidenced by improvements in center-of-mass and center-of-pressure stability measures. In addition, this study confirmed the effectiveness of the waist vibrotactile feedback in improving standing balance control even under muscle fatigue induced by lower body exercise. The study further confirmed that the waist feedback is more effective in people with lower baseline balance performance in both normal and fatigue conditions.
Date Created
2022
Agent

Design and Control of a Lizard-inspired Tube Inspector Robot

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Description
Tubes and pipelines serve as a major component of several units in power plants and oil, gas, and water transmission. These structures undergo extreme conditions, where temperature and pressure vary, leading to corroding of the pipe over time, creating defects

Tubes and pipelines serve as a major component of several units in power plants and oil, gas, and water transmission. These structures undergo extreme conditions, where temperature and pressure vary, leading to corroding of the pipe over time, creating defects in them. A small crack in these tubes can cause major safety problems, so a regular inspection of these tubes is required. Most power plants prefer to use non-destructive testing procedures, such as long-range ultrasonic testing and phased array ultrasonic testing, to name a few. These procedures can be carried out with the help of crawlers that go inside the pipes. One of the main drawbacks of the current robotic tube inspection robots is the lack of maneuverability over complex tubular structures and the inability to traverse non-ferromagnetic pipelines. The main motivation of this project is to create a robotic system that can grab onto ferromagnetic and non-ferromagnetic tubes and move along those, move onto adjacent tubes, and maneuver around flanges and bends in the tube. Furthermore, most of the robots used for inspection rely on roller balls and suction-based components that can allow the robot to hold on to the curved surface of the tube. These techniques fail when the surface is rough or uneven, which has served as an inspiration to look at friction-based solutions. Lizards are known for their agile locomotion, as well as their ability to grab on any surface irrespective of the surface texture. The work presented here is focused on the design and control of a lizard-inspired tube inspection robot that can be used to inspect complex tubular structures made of any material.
Date Created
2022
Agent

Validating Granular Scaling Laws for Wheel/Screw Geometries

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Description
Building and optimizing a design for deformable media can be extremely costly. However, granular scaling laws enable the ability to predict system velocity and mobility power consumption by testing at a smaller scale in the same environment. The validity of

Building and optimizing a design for deformable media can be extremely costly. However, granular scaling laws enable the ability to predict system velocity and mobility power consumption by testing at a smaller scale in the same environment. The validity of the granular scaling laws for arbitrarily shaped wheels and screws were evaluated in materials like silica sand and BP-1, a lunar simulant. Different wheel geometries, such as non-grousered and straight and bihelically grousered wheels were created and tested using 3D printed technologies. Using the granular scaling laws and the empirical data from initial experiments, power and velocity were predicted for a larger scaled version then experimentally validated on a dynamic mobility platform. Working with granular media has high variability in material properties depending on initial environmental conditions, so particular emphasis was placed on consistency in the testing methodology. Through experiments, these scaling laws have been validated with defined use cases and limitations.
Date Created
2022
Agent