OmniSkins: Robotic skins that turn inanimate objects into multifunctional robots

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (22) ◽  
pp. eaat1853 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joran W. Booth ◽  
Dylan Shah ◽  
Jennifer C. Case ◽  
Edward L. White ◽  
Michelle C. Yuen ◽  
...  

Robots generally excel at specific tasks in structured environments but lack the versatility and the adaptability required to interact with and locomote within the natural world. To increase versatility in robot design, we present robotic skins that can wrap around arbitrary soft bodies to induce the desired motions and deformations. Robotic skins integrate actuation and sensing into a single conformable material and may be leveraged to create a multitude of controllable soft robots with different functions or gaits to accommodate the demands of different environments. We show that attaching the same robotic skin to a soft body in different ways, or to different soft bodies, leads to distinct motions. Further, we show that combining multiple robotic skins enables complex motions and functions. We demonstrate the versatility of this soft robot design approach in a wide range of applications—including manipulation tasks, locomotion, and wearables—using the same two-dimensional (2D) robotic skins reconfigured on the surface of various 3D soft, inanimate objects.

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (148) ◽  
pp. 20180301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krishna Manaswi Digumarti ◽  
Andrew T. Conn ◽  
Jonathan Rossiter

Swimming is employed as a form of locomotion by many organisms in nature across a wide range of scales. Varied strategies of shape change are employed to achieve fluidic propulsion at different scales due to changes in hydrodynamics. In the case of microorganisms, the small mass, low Reynolds number and dominance of viscous forces in the medium, requires a change in shape that is non-invariant under time reversal to achieve movement. The Euglena family of unicellular flagellates evolved a characteristic type of locomotion called euglenoid movement to overcome this challenge, wherein the body undergoes a giant change in shape. It is believed that these large deformations enable the organism to move through viscous fluids and tiny spaces. The ability to drastically change the shape of the body is particularly attractive in robots designed to move through constrained spaces and cluttered environments such as through the human body for invasive medical procedures or through collapsed rubble in search of survivors. Inspired by the euglenoids, we present the design of EuMoBot, a multi-segment soft robot that replicates large body deformations to achieve locomotion. Two robots have been fabricated at different sizes operating with a constant internal volume, which exploit hyperelasticity of fluid-filled elastomeric chambers to replicate the motion of euglenoids. The smaller robot moves at a speed of body lengths per cycle (20 mm min −1 or 2.2 cycles min −1 ) while the larger one attains a speed of body lengths per cycle (4.5 mm min −1 or 0.4 cycles min −1 ). We show the potential for biomimetic soft robots employing shape change to both replicate biological motion and act as a tool for studying it. In addition, we present a quantitative method based on elliptic Fourier descriptors to characterize and compare the shape of the robot with that of its biological counterpart. Our results show a similarity in shape of 85% and indicate that this method can be applied to understand the evolution of shape in other nonlinear, dynamic soft robots where a model for the shape does not exist.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 1950033
Author(s):  
Dominik Bauer ◽  
Cornelia Bauer ◽  
Jonathan P. King ◽  
Daniele Moro ◽  
Kai-Hung Chang ◽  
...  

There has been great progress in soft robot design, manufacture, and control in recent years, and soft robots are a tool of choice for safe and robust handling of objects in conditions of uncertainty. Still, dexterous in-hand manipulation using soft robots remains a challenge. This paper introduces foam robot hands actuated by tendons sewn through a fabric glove. The flexibility of tendon actuation allows for high competence in utilizing deformation for robust in-hand manipulation. We discuss manufacturing, control, and design optimization for foam robots and demonstrate robust grasping and in-hand manipulation on a variety of different physical hand prototypes.


HortScience ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 556-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fredy Van Wassenhove ◽  
Patrick Dirinck ◽  
Georges Vulsteke ◽  
Niceas Schamp

A two-dimensional capillary gas chromatographic method was developed to separate and quantify aromatic volatiles of celery in one analysis. The isolation, identification, and quantification of the volatile compounds of four cultivars of blanching celery (Apium graveolens L. var. dulce) and six cultivars of celeriac (Apium graveolens L. var. rapaceum) are described. The qualitative composition of Likens-Nickerson extracts of both cultivars is similar. The concentration of terpenes and phthalides, the key volatile components, found in various cultivars of both celery and celeriac varied over a wide range.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1431
Author(s):  
Sungsik Wang ◽  
Tae Heung Lim ◽  
Kyoungsoo Oh ◽  
Chulhun Seo ◽  
Hosung Choo

This article proposes a method for the prediction of wide range two-dimensional refractivity for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) applications, using an inverse distance weighted (IDW) interpolation of high-altitude radio refractivity data from multiple meteorological observatories. The radio refractivity is extracted from an atmospheric data set of twenty meteorological observatories around the Korean Peninsula along a given altitude. Then, from the sparse refractive data, the two-dimensional regional radio refractivity of the entire Korean Peninsula is derived using the IDW interpolation, in consideration of the curvature of the Earth. The refractivities of the four seasons in 2019 are derived at the locations of seven meteorological observatories within the Korean Peninsula, using the refractivity data from the other nineteen observatories. The atmospheric refractivities on 15 February 2019 are then evaluated across the entire Korean Peninsula, using the atmospheric data collected from the twenty meteorological observatories. We found that the proposed IDW interpolation has the lowest average, the lowest average root-mean-square error (RMSE) of ∇M (gradient of M), and more continuous results than other methods. To compare the resulting IDW refractivity interpolation for airborne SAR applications, all the propagation path losses across Pohang and Heuksando are obtained using the standard atmospheric condition of ∇M = 118 and the observation-based interpolated atmospheric conditions on 15 February 2019. On the terrain surface ranging from 90 km to 190 km, the average path losses in the standard and derived conditions are 179.7 dB and 182.1 dB, respectively. Finally, based on the air-to-ground scenario in the SAR application, two-dimensional illuminated field intensities on the terrain surface are illustrated.


2020 ◽  
Vol 146 ◽  
pp. 03004
Author(s):  
Douglas Ruth

The most influential parameter on the behavior of two-component flow in porous media is “wettability”. When wettability is being characterized, the most frequently used parameter is the “contact angle”. When a fluid-drop is placed on a solid surface, in the presence of a second, surrounding fluid, the fluid-fluid surface contacts the solid-surface at an angle that is typically measured through the fluid-drop. If this angle is less than 90°, the fluid in the drop is said to “wet” the surface. If this angle is greater than 90°, the surrounding fluid is said to “wet” the surface. This definition is universally accepted and appears to be scientifically justifiable, at least for a static situation where the solid surface is horizontal. Recently, this concept has been extended to characterize wettability in non-static situations using high-resolution, two-dimensional digital images of multi-component systems. Using simple thought experiments and published experimental results, many of them decades old, it will be demonstrated that contact angles are not primary parameters – their values depend on many other parameters. Using these arguments, it will be demonstrated that contact angles are not the cause of wettability behavior but the effect of wettability behavior and other parameters. The result of this is that the contact angle cannot be used as a primary indicator of wettability except in very restricted situations. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that even for the simple case of a capillary interface in a vertical tube, attempting to use simply a two-dimensional image to determine the contact angle can result in a wide range of measured values. This observation is consistent with some published experimental results. It follows that contact angles measured in two-dimensions cannot be trusted to provide accurate values and these values should not be used to characterize the wettability of the system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinyang Zhang ◽  
Bar Hen ◽  
Alexander Palevski ◽  
Aharon Kapitulnik

AbstractMany experiments investigating magnetic-field tuned superconductor-insulator transition (H-SIT) often exhibit low-temperature resistance saturation, which is interpreted as an anomalous metallic phase emerging from a ‘failed superconductor’, thus challenging conventional theory. Here we study a random granular array of indium islands grown on a gateable layer of indium-oxide. By tuning the intergrain couplings, we reveal a wide range of magnetic fields where resistance saturation is observed, under conditions of careful electromagnetic filtering and within a wide range of linear response. Exposure to external broadband noise or microwave radiation is shown to strengthen the tendency of superconductivity, where at low field a global superconducting phase is restored. Increasing magnetic field unveils an ‘avoided H-SIT’ that exhibits granularity-induced logarithmic divergence of the resistance/conductance above/below that transition, pointing to possible vestiges of the original emergent duality observed in a true H-SIT. We conclude that anomalous metallic phase is intimately associated with inherent inhomogeneities, exhibiting robust behavior at attainable temperatures for strongly granular two-dimensional systems.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shao-Zhen Lin ◽  
Wu-Yang Zhang ◽  
Dapeng Bi ◽  
Bo Li ◽  
Xi-Qiao Feng

AbstractInvestigation of energy mechanisms at the collective cell scale is a challenge for understanding various biological processes, such as embryonic development and tumor metastasis. Here we investigate the energetics of self-sustained mesoscale turbulence in confluent two-dimensional (2D) cell monolayers. We find that the kinetic energy and enstrophy of collective cell flows in both epithelial and non-epithelial cell monolayers collapse to a family of probability density functions, which follow the q-Gaussian distribution rather than the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution. The enstrophy scales linearly with the kinetic energy as the monolayer matures. The energy spectra exhibit a power-decaying law at large wavenumbers, with a scaling exponent markedly different from that in the classical 2D Kolmogorov–Kraichnan turbulence. These energetic features are demonstrated to be common for all cell types on various substrates with a wide range of stiffness. This study provides unique clues to understand active natures of cell population and tissues.


1972 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Brundrett ◽  
W. B. Nicoll ◽  
A. B. Strong

The van Driest damped mixing length has been extended to account for the effects of mass transfer through a porous plate into a turbulent, two-dimensional incompressible boundary layer. The present mixing length is continuous from the wall through to the inner-law region of the flow, and although empirical, has been shown to predict wall shear stress and heat transfer data for a wide range of blowing rates.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuoyu Chen ◽  
Bai Yang Wang ◽  
Adrian G. Swartz ◽  
Hyeok Yoon ◽  
Yasuyuki Hikita ◽  
...  

AbstractAnomalous metallic behavior, marked by a saturating finite resistivity much lower than the Drude estimate, has been observed in a wide range of two-dimensional superconductors. Utilizing the electrostatically gated LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface as a versatile platform for superconductor-metal quantum phase transitions, we probe variations in the gate, magnetic field, and temperature to construct a phase diagram crossing from superconductor, anomalous metal, vortex liquid, to the Drude metal state, combining longitudinal and Hall resistivity measurements. We find that the anomalous metal phases induced by gating and magnetic field, although differing in symmetry, are connected in the phase diagram and exhibit similar magnetic field response approaching zero temperature. Namely, within a finite regime of the anomalous metal state, the longitudinal resistivity linearly depends on the field while the Hall resistivity diminishes, indicating an emergent particle-hole symmetry. The universal behavior highlights the uniqueness of the quantum bosonic metallic state, distinct from bosonic insulators and vortex liquids.


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