Design, manufacturing and applications of small-scale magnetic soft robots

2021 ◽  
pp. 101268
Author(s):  
Mehdi Eshaghi ◽  
Mohsen Ghasemi ◽  
Korosh Khorshidi
Keyword(s):  
Small Scale ◽  
Soft Robots

scholarly journals Task space adaptation via the learning of gait controllers of magnetic soft millirobots

2021 ◽  
pp. 027836492110218
Author(s):  
Sinan O. Demir ◽  
Utku Culha ◽  
Alp C. Karacakol ◽  
Abdon Pena-Francesch ◽  
Sebastian Trimpe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
Bayesian Optimization ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Soft Robots ◽  
Modeling And Control ◽  
Walking Gait ◽  
Physical Experiments ◽  
Efficient Learning ◽  
Task Environments

Untethered small-scale soft robots have promising applications in minimally invasive surgery, targeted drug delivery, and bioengineering applications as they can directly and non-invasively access confined and hard-to-reach spaces in the human body. For such potential biomedical applications, the adaptivity of the robot control is essential to ensure the continuity of the operations, as task environment conditions show dynamic variations that can alter the robot’s motion and task performance. The applicability of the conventional modeling and control methods is further limited for soft robots at the small-scale owing to their kinematics with virtually infinite degrees of freedom, inherent stochastic variability during fabrication, and changing dynamics during real-world interactions. To address the controller adaptation challenge to dynamically changing task environments, we propose using a probabilistic learning approach for a millimeter-scale magnetic walking soft robot using Bayesian optimization (BO) and Gaussian processes (GPs). Our approach provides a data-efficient learning scheme by finding the gait controller parameters while optimizing the stride length of the walking soft millirobot using a small number of physical experiments. To demonstrate the controller adaptation, we test the walking gait of the robot in task environments with different surface adhesion and roughness, and medium viscosity, which aims to represent the possible conditions for future robotic tasks inside the human body. We further utilize the transfer of the learned GP parameters among different task spaces and robots and compare their efficacy on the improvement of data-efficient controller learning.

scholarly journals Untethered and ultrafast soft-bodied robots

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xu Wang ◽  
Guoyong Mao ◽  
Jin Ge ◽  
Michael Drack ◽  
Gilbert Santiago Cañón Bermúdez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Biomedical Applications ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Model Systems ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Natural Environments ◽  
Soft Robots ◽  
High Frequencies ◽  
Strongly Nonlinear ◽  
Specific Energy Density

Abstract Acting at high speed enables creatures to survive in their harsh natural environments. They developed strategies for fast actuation that inspire technological embodiments like soft robots. Here, we demonstrate a series of simulation-guided lightweight, durable, untethered, small-scale soft-bodied robots that perform large-degree deformations at high frequencies up to 100 Hz, are driven at very low magnetic fields down to 0.5 mT and exhibit a specific energy density of 10.8 kJ m−3 mT−1. Unforeseen asynchronous strongly nonlinear cross-clapping behavior of our robots is observed in experiments and analyzed by simulation, breaking ground for future designs of soft-bodied robots. Our robots walk, swim, levitate, transport cargo, squeeze into a vessel smaller than their dimensions and can momentarily close around a living fly. Such ultrafast soft robots can rapidly adapt to varying environmental conditions, inspire biomedical applications in confined environments, and serve as model systems to develop complex movements inspired by nature.

scholarly journals Bioinspired underwater locomotion of light-driven liquid crystal gels

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (10) ◽  
pp. 5125-5133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamed Shahsavan ◽  
Amirreza Aghakhani ◽  
Hao Zeng ◽  
Yubing Guo ◽  
Zoey S. Davidson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Liquid Crystal ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Light Illumination ◽  
Stimuli Responsive ◽  
Soft Robots ◽  
Responsive Materials ◽  
Aquatic Locomotion ◽  
Sea Slugs ◽  
Application Potential ◽  
Molecular Anisotropy

Soft-bodied aquatic invertebrates, such as sea slugs and snails, are capable of diverse locomotion modes under water. Recapitulation of such multimodal aquatic locomotion in small-scale soft robots is challenging, due to difficulties in precise spatiotemporal control of deformations and inefficient underwater actuation of existing stimuli-responsive materials. Solving this challenge and devising efficient untethered manipulation of soft stimuli-responsive materials in the aquatic environment would significantly broaden their application potential in biomedical devices. We mimic locomotion modes common to sea invertebrates using monolithic liquid crystal gels (LCGs) with inherent light responsiveness and molecular anisotropy. We elicit diverse underwater locomotion modes, such as crawling, walking, jumping, and swimming, by local deformations induced by selective spatiotemporal light illumination. Our results underpin the pivotal role of the physicomechanical properties of LCGs in the realization of diverse modes of light-driven robotic underwater locomotion. We envisage that our results will introduce a toolbox for designing efficient untethered soft robots for fluidic environments.

Reasons to strike first

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Buckner ◽  
Luke Glowacki
Keyword(s):  
Intergroup Conflict ◽  
Small Scale

Abstract De Dreu and Gross predict that attackers will have more difficulty winning conflicts than defenders. As their analysis is presumed to capture the dynamics of decentralized conflict, we consider how their framework compares with ethnographic evidence from small-scale societies, as well as chimpanzee patterns of intergroup conflict. In these contexts, attackers have significantly more success in conflict than predicted by De Dreu and Gross's model. We discuss the possible reasons for this disparity.

Exploring Coronal Structures with SOHO

2000 ◽  
Vol 179 ◽  
pp. 403-406
Author(s):  
M. Karovska ◽  
B. Wood ◽  
J. Chen ◽  
J. Cook ◽  
R. Howard
Keyword(s):  
Solar Corona ◽  
Image Enhancement ◽  
Coronal Mass Ejections ◽  
Dynamical Evolution ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Low Contrast ◽  
Contrast Structures ◽  
Scale Structures ◽  
Small Scale Structures ◽  
Coronal Structures

AbstractWe applied advanced image enhancement techniques to explore in detail the characteristics of the small-scale structures and/or the low contrast structures in several Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) observed by SOHO. We highlight here the results from our studies of the morphology and dynamical evolution of CME structures in the solar corona using two instruments on board SOHO: LASCO and EIT.

Scanning tunneling microscopy and atomic force microscopy: New tools for biology

1989 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 778-779
Author(s):  
CE Bracker ◽  
P. K. Hansma
Keyword(s):  
Physical Property ◽  
Scanning Probe ◽  
Scanning Tunneling ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Tunneling Microscopy ◽  
Force Microscopy ◽  
New Family ◽  
Small Probe ◽  
Atomic Force ◽  
Transmission Electron

A new family of scanning probe microscopes has emerged that is opening new horizons for investigating the fine structure of matter. The earliest and best known of these instruments is the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). First published in 1982, the STM earned the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for two of its inventors, G. Binnig and H. Rohrer. They shared the prize with E. Ruska for his work that had led to the development of the transmission electron microscope half a century earlier. It seems appropriate that the award embodied this particular blend of the old and the new because it demonstrated to the world a long overdue respect for the enormous contributions electron microscopy has made to the understanding of matter, and at the same time it signalled the dawn of a new age in microscopy. What we are seeing is a revolution in microscopy and a redefinition of the concept of a microscope.Several kinds of scanning probe microscopes now exist, and the number is increasing. What they share in common is a small probe that is scanned over the surface of a specimen and measures a physical property on a very small scale, at or near the surface. Scanning probes can measure temperature, magnetic fields, tunneling currents, voltage, force, and ion currents, among others.

Superstructures and ordering phenomena in ceramic superconductors

1996 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 710-711
Author(s):  
R. Gronsky
Keyword(s):  
Domain Growth ◽  
Small Displacement ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Ceramic Superconductors ◽  
Oxygen Sublattices ◽  
Tweed Contrast ◽  
Diffraction Patterns ◽  
Representative Image ◽  
Static Lattice ◽  
Modulation Wavelength

It is now well established that the phase transformation behavior of YBa2Cu3O6+δ is significantly influenced by matrix strain effects, as evidenced by the formation of accommodation twins, the occurrence of diffuse scattering in diffraction patterns, the appearance of tweed contrast in electron micrographs, and the generation of displacive modulation superstructures, all of which have been successfully modeled via simple Monte Carlo simulations. The model is based upon a static lattice formulation with two types of excitations, one of which is a change in oxygen occupancy, and the other a small displacement of both the copper and oxygen sublattices. Results of these simulations show that a displacive superstructure forms very rapidly in a morphology of finely textured domains, followed by domain growth and a more sharply defined modulation wavelength, ultimately evolving into a strong <110> tweed with 5 nm to 7 nm period. What is new about these findings is the revelation that both the small-scale deformation superstructures and coarser tweed morphologies can result from displacive modulations in ordered YBa2Cu3O6+δ and need not be restricted to domain coarsening of the disordered phase. Figures 1 and 2 show a representative image and diffraction pattern for fully-ordered (δ = 1) YBa2Cu3O6+δ associated with a long-period <110> modulation.

Indirect Assessment of Attitudes with Response-Time-Based Measures

2006 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 131-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliane Degner ◽  
Dirk Wentura ◽  
Klaus Rothermund
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Incremental Validity ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Implicit Measures ◽  
Scale Theory ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Predicting Behavior ◽  
Social Cognitive Theories

Abstract: We review research on response-latency based (“implicit”) measures of attitudes by examining what hopes and intentions researchers have associated with their usage. We identified the hopes of (1) gaining better measures of interindividual differences in attitudes as compared to self-report measures (quality hope); (2) better predicting behavior, or predicting other behaviors, as compared to self-reports (incremental validity hope); (3) linking social-cognitive theories more adequately to empirical research (theory-link hope). We argue that the third hope should be the starting point for using these measures. Any attempt to improve these measures should include the search for a small-scale theory that adequately explains the basic effects found with such a measure. To date, small-scale theories for different measures are not equally well developed.

Small-Scale Science to Large-Scale Profession

2000 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 396-398
Author(s):  
Roger Smith
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Small Scale

Evaluating the resistance of test systems to small scale cheating

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Guo ◽  
Louis Tay ◽  
Fritz Drasgow
Keyword(s):  
Small Scale ◽  
Test Systems
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