An obstacle-avoiding and stiffness-tunable modular bionic soft robot

The aim of this work is to design and model a novel modular bionic soft robot for crawling and crossing obstacles. The modular bionic soft robot is composed of several serial driving soft modules, each module is composed of two parallel soft actuators. By analyzing the influence of working pressure and manufacturing size on the stiffness of the modular bionic soft robot, the nonlinear variable stiffness model of the modular bionic soft robot is established. Based on this model, the spatial states and design parameters of the modular bionic soft robot are discussed when the modular bionic soft robot can pass through the obstacle. Experiments show that when the inflation air pressure of the modular bionic soft robot is 70 kPa, its speed can reach 7.89 mm/s and the height of obstacles passed by it can reach 42.8 mm. The feasibility of the proposed modular bionic soft robot and nonlinear variable stiffness model is verified by locomotion experiments.

Design and Fabrication of Wheelchair into Foldable Bed

In this paper lead screw mechanism is used to convert a wheelchair into bed and vice versa. When lead screw mechanism is operated, the foot rest which is downward goes till the level of seat of wheelchair and simultaneously the back support goes down to the same level making, its stretcher and vice versa, when it is converted into wheelchair from stretcher. Below the seat, a defecation system has been provided which is detachable and is operated by sliding mechanism. It is designed and fabricated in such a way that it can be used in hospitals as well as for personal use at home. Below the seat, a defecation system has been provided which is detachable and is operated by sliding mechanism. Also, obstacle avoiding sensor i.e., ultrasonic sensor is used to know if any obstacle will come in front of wheelchair, siren bell will ring. Keywords: Fabrication, Hospital, Mobility Aid, Lead Screw, Design, Wiper Motor, Wheelchair, Battery

Vision-Less Sensing for Autonomous Micro-Drones

This work presents a concept of intelligent vision-less micro-drones, which are motivated by flying animals such as insects, birds, and bats. The presented micro-drone (named BAT: Blind Autonomous Tiny-drone) can perform bio-inspired complex tasks without the use of cameras. The BAT uses LIDARs and self-emitted optical-flow in order to perform obstacle avoiding and maze-solving. The controlling algorithms were implemented on an onboard micro-controller, allowing the BAT to be fully autonomous. We further present a method for using the information collected by the drone to generate a detailed mapping of the environment. A complete model of the BAT was implemented and tested using several scenarios both in simulation and field experiments, in which it was able to explore and map complex building autonomously even in total darkness.