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Thread: Miscellaneous

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    Seahorse's Armor Gives Engineers Insight Into Robotics Designs

    Published on May 1, 2013

    The tail of a seahorse can be compressed to about half its size before permanent damage occurs, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. The tail's exceptional flexibility is due to its structure, made up of bony, armored plates, which slide past each other. Researchers are hoping to use a similar structure to create a flexible robotic arm equipped with muscles made out of polymer, which could be used in medical devices, underwater exploration and unmanned bomb detection and detonation.
    Thank you to the Birch Aquarium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego
    Work by the McKittrick and Meyers research groups at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego

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    Robert Full: The secrets of nature's grossest creatures, channeled into robots

    Published on Jun 6, 2014

    How can robots learn to stabilize on rough terrain, walk upside down, do gymnastic maneuvers in air and run into walls without harming themselves? Robert Full takes a look at the incredible body of the cockroach to show what it can teach robotics engineers.

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    Mechameleon - 3D Animation Short Film

    Uploaded on Jun 17, 2008

    Please take the time of 1 min. and comment!!!! its very important to me!!!!

    this is my qualification video for 3d- animation at my school, still not final though, just a test

    the idea for this project came from combining the words mechanic and chameleon to mechameleon, i thought it was quite funny and intresting so i picked this wordplay as a topic....

    i gonna update the video asap, till then just watch and leave a comment please!!!

    sound was done by a friend mine from my class

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    Maker Camp: Robotic Zoo!

    Streamed live on Jul 9, 2014

    Hop on over for a live hangout that looks at animal-inspired projects and bionics.

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    Bio-Inspired Tendon-Operated Continuum Robotics

    Published on Dec 3, 2014

    Curved tendons can provide new capabilities to robots that look and act like elephant's trunks or octopus tentacles

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    RI Seminar: Mark Cutkosky : Bio-Inspired Dynamic Surface Grasping

    Streamed live on Mar 20, 2015

    Mark Cutkosky
    Professor, Stanford University

    March 20, 2015

    Abstract
    The adhesive system of the gecko has several remarkable properties that make it ideal for agility on vertical and overhanging surfaces. It requires very little preload for sticking and (unlike sticky tape) very little effort to detach. It resists fouling when the gecko travels over dusty surfaces, and it is controllable: the amount of adhesion in the normal direction depends on the applied tangential force. Moreover, it is fast, allowing the gecko to climb at speeds of a meter per second. The desirable properties of the gecko's adhesive apparatus are a result of its unique, hierarchical structure, with feature sizes ranging from hundreds of nanometers to millimeters. Over the last several years, analogous features have been incorporated into various synthetic gecko-inspired adhesives, with gradually improving performance from the standpoints of adhesion, ease and speed of attachment and detachment, etc. In this talk we will explore recent developments to scale gecko-inspired directional adhesives beyond small wall-climbing robots to new applications including perching quadrotors and grappling space debris in orbit. These applications require scaling the adhesives to areas of 10x10cm or larger on flat or curved surfaces without loss in performance, and attaching in milliseconds to prevent bouncing. The solutions draw some inspiration from the arrangement of tendons and other compliant structures in the gecko's toe.

    Speaker Biography
    Mark R. Cutkosky is the Fletcher Jones Professor in the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. He joined Stanford in 1985, after working in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and as a design engineer at ALCOA, in Pittsburgh, PA. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985. Cutkosky's research activities include robotic manipulation and tactile sensing and the design and fabrication of biologically inspired robots. He has graduated over 40 Ph.D. students and published extensively in these areas. He consults with companies on robotics and human/computer interaction devices and holds several patents on related technologies. His work has been featured in Discover Magazine, The New York Times, National Geographic, Time Magazine and other publications and has appeared on PBS NOVA, CBS Evening News, and other popular media. Cutkosky’s awards include a Fulbright Faculty Chair (Italy 2002), Fletcher Jones and Charles M. Pigott Chairs at Stanford University, an NSF Presidential Young Investigator award and Times Magazine Best Innovations (2006) for the Stickybot gecko-inspired robot. He is a fellow of ASME and IEEE and a member of Sigma Xi.

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    RI Seminar: Greg Sawicki : Spring-loading human locomotion: Bio inspired lower-limb design

    Streamed live on Oct 24, 2014

    Greg Sawicki
    Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, North Carolina State University

    Spring-loading human locomotion: Taking inspiration from biology to improve lower-limb exoskeleton design

    Abstract
    The goal of the Human Physiology of Wearable Robotics (PoWeR) Laboratory is to discover and exploit key principles of locomotion neuromechanics in order to build wearable devices that can augment intact and/or restore impaired human locomotion. The primary performance goal of such devices is to reduce metabolic energy consumption of the user. Our design approach is motivated by a key passive dynamic principle that is crucial to efficient movement- the effective cycling of mechanical energy from the body’s center of mass to elastic tissues (i.e. tendon and aponeurosis) and back. In humans, a crucial site of elastic energy storage and return is the compliant triceps surae-Achilles tendon muscle-tendon unit – whereby, during walking, an effective ‘catapult mechanism’ is achieved by finely ‘tuned’ coordination of muscle force output. This controlled energy storage and release in elastic structures decreases the input energy demands on underlying power sources in the system (i.e. the muscles) while providing large short bursts of mechanical energy to power the step-to-step transition.

    First, I discuss the motivation and basic science behind the design of a passive elastic exoskeleton and novel clutching mechanism that can reduce the musculoskeletal loads on plantarflexor muscles by storage and release of elastic energy in a parallel spring worn about the ankle (i.e. exo-tendon) during human walking.

    Then, I address a crucial question in the design of wearable assistive devices: How does a mechanical element (motor or spring) acting in parallel with biological muscle-tendon unit influence its underlying ‘tuned’ elastic behavior? I examine how parallel assistance (e.g. from an exoskeleton) alters muscle-tendon interaction using a simple, forward dynamics (i.e. predictive) model of the ankle plantarflexors during vertical hopping with exo-tendons. When possible, I compare model estimates of muscle dynamics (i.e. length, velocity trajectories) to human data using functional ultrasound images taken from the triceps surae muscles with and without exo-tendon assistance. Finally, I discuss how this simple modeling-experimental framework could be used to (1) optimize mechanical assistance in terms of the user’s energetic benefit, injury risk and adaptation time and (2) elucidate underlying mechanisms that may drive preferred behaviors during human movement. A common theme emerges: More is not always better. That is, there are potential side-effects to exoskeleton designs that maximize reductions in musculoskeletal loading by ‘turning up the dial’ on mechanical assistance.

    Speaker Biography
    Dr. Gregory S. Sawicki is an Assistant Professor in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University (1999) and the University of California-Davis (2001). Prior to his arrival at NC State in summer 2009, Dr. Sawicki completed his Ph.D. in Human Neuromechanics at the University of Michigan, Ann-Arbor (2007) and was an NIH-funded Post-Doctoral Fellow in Integrative Biology at Brown University (2007-2009). Dr. Sawicki’s research area is Rehabilitation Engineering. He directs the Human Physiology of Wearable Robotics (PoWeR) laboratory focusing on uncovering fundamental principles of locomotion mechanics, energetics and neural control in both healthy and impaired (e.g. stroke) populations. The long term vision of the Human PoWeR lab is to exploit useful principles of human locomotion- applying them to motivate bio-inspired designs for state of the art lower-limb exoskeletons prostheses.

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