No description available.

Exoskeletons are getting popular day by day due to their abilities in helping people. Exoskeletons can be used to help people gain motor senses through rehabilitation. It can also help healthy people to augment their abilities. These exoskeletons need to be strong yet light, so that the human body can support the exoskeleton, while the exoskeleton can support the activity that is being performed. This calls for under-actuated systems, which help in avoiding unnecessary mass due to additional actuators, while providing the same movement capabilities. This thesis describes in detail about two such under-actuated upper body exoskeletons which can be used for lifting loads. The design of such exoskeletons and novel control techniques for comfortable usage is discussed in detail. / Master of Science / Exoskeletons are assistive devices which can help people in several ways. An exoskeleton can help people who are affected with stroke by enabling them to walk through rehabilitation and physiotherapy. It can also help people to perform beyond their capacity in terms of physical activities. This could be to lift more load than possible, run faster than usual. This thesis describes the design and working two such exoskeletons which can be attached to the upper body. These exoskeletons can be used by people to lift loads which would require a lot of effort and muscle activity. The addition of these exoskeletons potentially reduce the muscle activity on the user and helps avoiding injuries in long term. Such exoskeletons have to be light weight so that they do not defeat the purpose of reducing muscle activity. This problem is solved by using under-actuated systems, because a significant mass of the exoskeleton is taken by the actuators such as the motors. Using under-actuated systems help in lowering the mass of the exoskeleton, while still being able to perform the same kinds of motion. This thesis also talks about how these exoskeletons can be controlled such that the load is being lifted with minimal efforts, and being aware of the loads it is lifting to provide the correct amount of torque, above or below which can lead to the motor shooting up or down causing muscular discomfort and injuries in the arm.

No description available.

The work seeks toward further developing a novel robotic platform capable of stable three legged locomotion. This will be accomplished by creating a robust and adaptable robotic platform capable of executing different walking strategies and taking multiple continuous steps. Previous iterations of this platform have been developed, all of which have used a single gait strategy. This study will seek to develop two new strategies. The first of which is a modification of the original strategy with theoretically improved gate robustness. A second strategy will seek to implement more advanced control techniques to create a fully stable balanced gait. / Master of Science

Web games provide a platform for creative instructional activities that can capture the students' attention towards the course. These games can be used to emulate the realistic situations which can be used as effective lab experiments that could give the students a hands-on experience using real world scenarios. This thesis presents an innovative web-based game developed for the demonstration of the driver-behavior at signalized intersections that can be used as a supplementary tool for the Transportation Engineering course. The game format is carefully designed to supplement the understanding of the class learning material through a fun environment. It was designed to be widely accessible through the internet and have an attractive user interface and was improved from the feedback obtained from the pilot study. The game is programmed on the .NET Framework using the Microsoft Visual C# as a core programming language, ASP to develop the web interface, and Microsoft Access as the databases for the program. The thesis also provides a methodological framework for collecting data about student engagement in a course and in particular presents the data collection procedure used in Transportation Engineering Course (CEE 4609). The collected data was analyzed to find the student engagement in the course after the introduction of the game. The thesis gives the conclusions drawn from the research with insights into possible drawbacks and scope for future improvements. / Master of Science

<p>Generating and stabilizing periodic motions in nonlinear systems is a challenging task. In the control system community this topic is also known as limit cycle control. In recent years a framework known as Virtual Holonomic Constraints (VHC) has been developed as one of the solutions to this problem. The aim of this thesis is to give an insight into this approach and its practical application.</p><p>The contribution of this work is primarily the experimental validation of the theory. A step by step procedure of this methodology is given for motion planning, as well as for controller design. Three particular setups were chosen for experiments: the inertia wheel pendulum, the Furuta pendulum and the two-link planar pendulum. These under-actuated mechanical systems are well known benchmarking setups for testing advanced control design methods.</p><p>Further application is intended for cases such as biped robot walking/running, human and animal locomotion analysis, etc.</p>

<p>Robotic manipulators have been introduced in industry as a form of increasing productivity. Today, there exist an interest to enlarge the application of these manipulators to outdoor environments. Forestry cranes used in the forestry industry are a clear example. A long term goal in this industry is the development of autonomous systems to increase the logging efficiency. In this thesis, we consider how to control the rotator of these cranes, which is an electro-hydraulically actuated motor, and is used to control the end ffector tool. Control system design for the rotator is a challenging task since the sensing is not available to full extent. The main reason is the harsh environment that these machines are exposed to and sensors such as encoders are very fragile and cannot be used. In this thesis we use alternative sensing devices, such as a magnetic sensor and a stereo camera. In the case of the camera we face a problem with big delay. A prediction method has been used to compute desired values. Due to various reasons certain measuring devices can not be used in the industry. We consider four cases for control system design where dfferent combinations of available sensors have been used. Initially angular position of the rotator is controlled using only the magnetic sensor. A cascade control setup is used where pressure and position are measurable, first using the magnetic sensor and later using the camera. When only pressure measurements are available identified models have replaced sensors for position feedback. All tests and experiments have been done using a scaled version of a real forestry crane. The available crane has similar configuration and dynamics as the real one and is therefor useful for experimental purposes.</p>

BACKGROUND: Aerosol therapy using albuterol is one of the most prescribed asthma treatments. The most frequently used methods of aerosol delivery are pneumatic jet nebulizer (JN), pressurized metered-dose inhaler (pMDI), and breath-actuated nebulizer (BAN). Choosing among these devices is usually not based on thorough comparison of efficiency or cost. We compare the efficiency of these three devices using a spontaneously breathing adult model. METHODS: We connected each aerosol generator—JN, BAN, or pMDI with a valved holding chamber (VHC)—to the face of an adult teaching manikin. Below the bifurcation, an elbow adaptor was connected to a corrugated tube and was angled to be at a lower level than the collecting filter to prevent droplets from dripping directly into the collecting filter. From the collecting filter, another corrugated tube was connected to a prevention filter, which was then connected to an adult breathing simulator. Spontaneous breathing parameters were VT 450 mL, RR 20/min, and I: E ratio 1:2. First, we compared JN, BAN (2.5 mg/3 mL), and pMDI (4 puffs); second, we compared JN and BAN 2.5 mg/0.5 mL plus 0.5 mL normal saline. Data were analyzed using spectrophotometry (276 nm). One-way ANOVA and independent sample t-tests were used (p<0.05). RESULTS: There were no differences in inhaled mass percentage (p=0.172) JN, BAN, and pMDI in the first experiment. Treatment time with BAN was significantly longer (p=0.0001) than with JN or pMDI. In the second experiment, BAN delivered more medication (p=0.004) than jet nebulizer. Treatment time was significantly less with JN (p=0.010). There was no difference in residual volume among JN and BAN in both experiment (p=0.765, p=0.115). CONCLUSIONS: All the devices that were compared using a 3 ml or 4 pMDI puffs delivered comparable amount of medication with no significant difference. However, BAN using 1ml fill volume delivers more drug compared to JN. Additionally, treatment time was longest with BAN. Even with reduction of its filling volume, BAN delivers a higher amount of medication to that of pMDI but was not statistically significant.

Robotic manipulators have been introduced in industry as a form of increasing productivity. Today, there exist an interest to enlarge the application of these manipulators to outdoor environments. Forestry cranes used in the forestry industry are a clear example. A long term goal in this industry is the development of autonomous systems to increase the logging efficiency. In this thesis, we consider how to control the rotator of these cranes, which is an electro-hydraulically actuated motor, and is used to control the end ffector tool. Control system design for the rotator is a challenging task since the sensing is not available to full extent. The main reason is the harsh environment that these machines are exposed to and sensors such as encoders are very fragile and cannot be used. In this thesis we use alternative sensing devices, such as a magnetic sensor and a stereo camera. In the case of the camera we face a problem with big delay. A prediction method has been used to compute desired values. Due to various reasons certain measuring devices can not be used in the industry. We consider four cases for control system design where dfferent combinations of available sensors have been used. Initially angular position of the rotator is controlled using only the magnetic sensor. A cascade control setup is used where pressure and position are measurable, first using the magnetic sensor and later using the camera. When only pressure measurements are available identified models have replaced sensors for position feedback. All tests and experiments have been done using a scaled version of a real forestry crane. The available crane has similar configuration and dynamics as the real one and is therefor useful for experimental purposes.

Composed of a left mold and a right one, an open and close molding mechanism is widely used in various plastic industries. The aim of this study is to design cam-link mechanisms whose right mold motions can rapidly synchronize with their left mold motions so that the mechanisms have higher stiffness for reducing residual vibration. In structural design of a molding mechanism, the device is actuated by a planar cam mechanism. And a set of cam actuated links is synthesized to drive the left mold. Then, another set of links connected to one of the left mold links is used to synchronously actuate the right mold together with the left mold. This study first is to synthesize the B-Spline curves for the left mold motion. Subsequently, the linkage sizes are modified base on the mechanical advantages. Then, the motion curves of the right mold and the cam follower device can be analytically determined. And the rigid body dynamic behavior of the mechanism is analyzed. Finally, the geometry of the cam is analyzed and the size of the cam follower rollers are selected to achieve the longer life time at the working speeds. This research presents eight different design cases to investigate the kinematic and dynamic characteristics of the molding mechanism. As a result, a case with improved kinematic and dynamic performance is selected.