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published_or_final_version / Mechanical Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The deformation control problem arises in applications where a mechanical system needs to actively modify the shape of a soft object. This problem is needed in surgical robotics to automate delicate procedures with soft tissues, e.g. suturing and needle insertion, in food industry to automate the shaping of food materials such as dough, or in textile industry to automate the folding and positioning of extensible fabrics, to name a few cases. However, despite the recent progress in physically interactive and soft robotics, the active deformation of compliant objects remains an open research problem with many economically important applications. One of the main issues that complicates the implementation of these types of tasks is the difficulty to identify the deformation properties of soft materials. / The aim of this thesis is to provide model-free solutions to this challenging control design problem. For that, new adaptive methods to servo-control unknown elastic deformations are presented. First, this thesis proposes a kinematic controller that estimates the deformation Jacobian matrix in real-time, hence, avoids the identification of the object’s deformation model. This method computes the unknown matrix based on measurements of the deformation flow and the velocity input to the manipulator; the matrix is then used to map the deformation control action into end-effector velocities. Next, this thesis presents a conceptually different adaptive control approach that does not require to numerically estimate the deformation Jacobian matrix or to numerically compute the optical flow. However, to compute the velocity control input, offline testing deformations must be performed. In this method, the deformation control action is mapped to end-effector velocities by an adaptively varying transposed matrix, thus no matrix inversion is required. / This thesis also tackles the simultaneous vision-based control of multiple elastic deformations. This method incorporates the attitude of a fully-constrained gripper and the measurements from multiple vision sensors into the Jacobian estimation algorithm; by doing this, the number of controllable deformation degrees-of-freedom is increased. Additionally, this thesis addresses the vision-based deformation problem but with torque-controlled manipulators. The presented adaptive method exploits the passivity properties of the system and computes the controller with the online estimated Jacobian matrix. Finally, this thesis formulates the deformation control problem but in terms of force sensory feedback, in other words, the control objective is the regulation of the applied force onto the elastic object; the presented energy shaping controller preserves in closed-loop the Hamiltonian structure of the dynamical system. / The originality of this work lies in the uncalibrated nature of the control methods, i.e. none of the proposed controllers require the identification of the object’s deformation/stiffness model and the camera’s parameters. This uncalibrated feature allows to control on-the-fly elastic deformations of unknown compliant objects. It must be remarked that for each of the control methods, its stability is analysed with Lyapunov theory, and its performance is experimentally verified with robot manipulators. / Navarro Alarcon, David. / Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-132).

Thesis--Ph. D., University of Hong Kong. / Offset from typescript.

The effect of softening due to vibrations induced on metals has been used in many industrial processes such as forming, machining and joining. These industrial applications utilize ultrasonic vibrations in addition to quasi-static stresses in order to deform metals more easily. The phenomenon of ultrasonic softening is also called the Blaha effect or acoustoplastic effect. Besides the macro-scale softening due to ultrasonic vibrations imposed on quasi-static deformation stress, sub-micron level softening due to vibrations was also observed in nanoindentation experiments in recent years. These experiments made use of the oscillatory stresses of the vibrations provided by the continuous stiffness measurement (CSM) mode of nanoindentation. Lowering of loading and hardness data has been observed at shallow indent depths where the amplitude of vibration is relatively large. Despite the common industrial usages of acoustoplastic effect and the observation of softening in CSM mode nanoindentation, the physical principle underlying is still not well understood. For acoustoplastic effect the existing understanding is usually one in which the ultrasonic irradiation either imposes additional stress waves to augment the quasi-static applied load, or causes heating of the metal. For the softening observed in CSM mode nanoindentation, the effect is either attributed to instrumental errors or enhancement of nucleation of dislocations which makes them move faster. Investigations on the link between microscopical changes and the softening have been rare. In this thesis, indentation experiments in both macro and micro scales were performed on aluminium, copper and molybdenum samples with and without the simultaneously application of oscillatory stresses. Significant softening was observed, and the amount of softening from macro to micro scale indentation of similar displacement/amplitude ratios is similar. The deformation microstructures underneath the indents were investigated by a combination of cross-sectional microscopic techniques involving focused-ion-beam milling, transmission electron microscopy and crystal orientation mapping by electron backscattered diffraction. Electron microscopy analyses reveal subgrain formation under the vibrated indents, which implies intrinsic changes. To further give physical insight into the phenomenon, dislocation dynamics simulations were carried out to investigate the interactions of dislocations under the combined influence of quasi-static and oscillatory stresses. Under a combined stress state, dislocation annihilation is found to be enhanced leading to larger strains at the same load history. The simulated strain evolution under different stress schemes also resembles closely certain experimental observations previously obtained. The discovery here goes far beyond the simple picture that the effect of vibration is merely an added-stress one, since here, the intrinsic strain-hardening potency of the material is found to be reduced by the oscillatory stress, through its effect on enhancing dislocation annihilation. The experimental and simulation results collectively suggest that simultaneous application of oscillatory stress has the ability to enhance dipole annihilation and cause subgrain formation. The superimposed oscillatory stress causes dislocations to travel longer distances in a jerky manner, so that they can continuously explore until dipole annihilation. In addition, microscopic observations showed that subgrain formation and reduction in dislocation density generally occurred in different metals when stress oscillations were applied. These suggest that the intrinsic oscillation-induced effects of softening and dislocation annihilation are a rather general phenomenon occurring in metals with different stacking fault energies and crystal structures. / published_or_final_version / Mechanical Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Mechanical Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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