Low-Cost Hands-On Engineering Kit and Curriculum for Elementary Level Students and the IRB Process for User-Based Feedback

Description

The creative project was to create a working prototype kit that can teach multiple lessons of the curriculum that the schools or individual families could purchase. The curriculum would be centered on the engineering and science curriculum that is introduced…

The creative project was to create a working prototype kit that can teach multiple lessons of the curriculum that the schools or individual families could purchase. The curriculum would be centered on the engineering and science curriculum that is introduced from fourth to sixth grade classes. By creating an interactive kit with curriculum that the students could individualize and use for multiple lessons, the goal is to get them more engaged in the material. The project would consist of a week-long project kit that will introduce different engineering topics for three to four days of the week with mini projects and a final project that pieces together the topics they learned. The biggest take away from the project was how to best get user feedback and fast track the IRB process. The IRB process for a project focusing on minors and teachers will cause some catches in the process. Included is a discussion on the IRB process for a project like this and how to best go through or avoid IRB to ensure the project can progress, while still gathering valuable information.

Date Created
2022-05
Agent

Upper-Extremity Exoskeleton

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Description

In nature, some animals have an exoskeleton that provides protection, strength, and stability to the organism, but in engineering, an exoskeleton refers to a device that augments or aids human ability. Since the 1890s, engineers have been designing exoskeletal devices,…

In nature, some animals have an exoskeleton that provides protection, strength, and stability to the organism, but in engineering, an exoskeleton refers to a device that augments or aids human ability. Since the 1890s, engineers have been designing exoskeletal devices, and conducting research into the possible uses of such devices. These bio-inspired mechanisms do not necessarily relate to a robotic device, though since the 1900s, robotic principles have been applied to the design of exoskeletons making their development a subfield in robotic research. There are different multiple types of exoskeletons that target different areas of the human body, and the targeted area depends on the need of the device. Usually, the devices are developed for medical or military usage; for this project, the focus is on medical development of an automated elbow joint to assist in rehabilitation. This project is being developed for therapeutic purposes in conjunction between Arizona State University and Mayo Clinic. Because of the nature of this project, I am responsible for the development of a lightweight brace that could be applied to the elbow joint that was designed by Dr. Kevin Hollander. In this project, my research centered on the use of the Wilmer orthosis brace design, and its possible application to the exoskeleton elbow being developed for Mayo Clinic. This brace is a lightweight solution that provides extra comfort to the user.

Date Created
2022-05
Agent

The Efficiency of Spine Stiffness for Anguilliform Locomotion

Description

In this paper, we discuss the methods and requirements to simulate a soft bodied beam using traditional rigid body kinematics to produce motion inspired by eels. Eels produce a form of undulatory locomotion called anguilliform locomotion that propagates waves throughout…

In this paper, we discuss the methods and requirements to simulate a soft bodied beam using traditional rigid body kinematics to produce motion inspired by eels. Eels produce a form of undulatory locomotion called anguilliform locomotion that propagates waves throughout the entire body. The system that we are analyzing is a flexible 3D printed beam being actively driven by a servo motor. Using the simulation, we also analyze different parameters for these spines to maximize the linear speed of the system.

Date Created
2022-05
Agent

Soft Actuators for Miniature and Untethered Soft Robots Using Stimuli-Responsive Hydrogels

Description
Soft robots currently rely on additional hardware such as pumps, high voltage supplies,light generation sources, and magnetic field generators for their operation. These components resist miniaturization; thus, embedding them into small-scale soft robots is challenging. This issue limits their applications, especially in…

Soft robots currently rely on additional hardware such as pumps, high voltage supplies,light generation sources, and magnetic field generators for their operation. These components resist miniaturization; thus, embedding them into small-scale soft robots is challenging. This issue limits their applications, especially in hyper-redundant mobile robots. This dissertation aims at addressing some of the challenges associated with creating miniature, untethered soft robots that can function without any attachment to external power supplies or receiving any control signals from outside sources. This goal is accomplished by introducing a soft active material and a manufacturing method that together, facilitate the miniaturization of soft robots and effectively supports their autonomous, mobile operation without any connection to outside equipment or human intervention. The soft active material presented here is a hydrogel based on a polymer called poly(Nisopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm). This hydrogel responds to changes in the temperature and responds by expanding or contracting. A major challenge regarding PNIPAAm-based hydrogels is their slow response. This challenge is addressed by introducing a mixedsolvent photo-polymerization technique that alters the pore structure of the hydrogel and facilitates the water transport and thus the rate of volume change. Using this technique, the re-swelling response time of hydrogels is reduced to 2:4min – over 25 times faster than hydrogels demonstrated previously. The material properties of hydrogels including their response rate and Young’s modulus are tuned simultaneously. The one-step photopolymerization using UV light is performed in under 15 sec, which is a significant improvement over thermo-polymerization, which takes anywhere between a few minutes to several hours. Photopolymerization is key towards simplifying recipes, improving access to these techniques, and making them tractable for iterative design processes. To address the manufacturing challenges, soft voxel actuators (SVAs) are presented. SVAs are actuated by electrical currents through Joule heating. SVAs weighing only 100 mg require small footprint microcontrollers for their operation which can be embedded in the robotic system. The advantages of hydrogel-based SVAs are demonstrated through different robotic platforms namely a hyper-redundant manipulator with 16 SVAs, an untethered miniature robot for mobile underwater applications using 8 SVAs, and a gripper using 32 SVAs.
Date Created
2021
Agent

Development of a Soft Robotic Exosuit for Knee Flexion Assistance

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Description
The knee joint has essential functions to support the body weight and maintain normal walking. Neurological diseases like stroke and musculoskeletal disorders like osteoarthritis can affect the function of the knee. Besides physical therapy, robot-assisted therapy using wearable exoskeletons and…

The knee joint has essential functions to support the body weight and maintain normal walking. Neurological diseases like stroke and musculoskeletal disorders like osteoarthritis can affect the function of the knee. Besides physical therapy, robot-assisted therapy using wearable exoskeletons and exosuits has shown the potential as an efficient therapy that helps patients restore their limbs’ functions. Exoskeletons and exosuits are being developed for either human performance augmentation or medical purposes like rehabilitation. Although, the research on exoskeletons started early before exosuits, the research and development on exosuits have recently grown rapidly as exosuits have advantages that exoskeletons lack. The objective of this research is to develop a soft exosuit for knee flexion assistance and validate its ability to reduce the EMG activity of the knee flexor muscles. The exosuit has been developed with a novel soft fabric actuator and novel 3D printed adjustable braces to attach the actuator aligned with the knee. A torque analytical model has been derived and validate experimentally to characterize and predict the torque output of the actuator. In addition to that, the actuator’s deflation and inflation time has been experimentally characterized and a controller has been implemented and the exosuit has been tested on a healthy human subject. It is found that the analytical torque model succeeded to predict the torque output in flexion angle range from 0° to 60° more precisely than analytical models in the literature. Deviations existed beyond 60° might have happened because some factors like fabric extensibility and actuator’s bending behavior. After human testing, results showed that, for the human subject tested, the exosuit gave the best performance when the controller was tuned to inflate at 31.9 % of the gait cycle. At this inflation timing, the biceps femoris, the semitendinosus and the vastus lateralis muscles showed average electromyography (EMG) reduction of - 32.02 %, - 23.05 % and - 2.85 % respectively. Finally, it is concluded that the developed exosuit may assist the knee flexion of more diverse healthy human subjects and it may potentially be used in the future in human performance augmentation and rehabilitation of people with disabilities.
Date Created
2021
Agent
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