Miniature compliant grippers are designed and developed to manipulate biological cells and characterize them. Apart from grippers, other compliant mechanisms are also demonstrated to be effective in manipulation and characterization. Although scalability and force-sensing capability are inherent to a compliant mechanism, it is important to design a compliant mechanism for a given application. Two techniques based on Spring-lever models and kinetoelastostatic maps are developed and used for designing compliant devices. The kinetoelastostatic maps-based technique is a novel approach in designing a mechanism of a given topology and shape. It is also demonstrated that these techniques can be used to tune the stiffness of a mechanism for a given application. In situations where any single mechanism is incapable of executing a specific task, two or more mechanisms are combined into a single continuum with enhanced functionality. This has led to designs of composite compliant mechanisms. Biological cells are manipulated using compliant grippers in order to study their mechanical responses. Biological cells whose size varies from 1 mm (a large zebrafish embryo) to 10 µm (human liver cells), and which require the grippers to resolve forces ranging from 1 mN (zebrafish embryo) to 10 nN (human cells), are manipulated. In addition to biological cells, in some special cases such as tissue-cutting and cement-testing, inanimate specimens are used to highlight specific features of compliant mechanisms. Two extreme cases of manipulation are carried out to demonstrate the efficacy of the design techniques. They are: (i) breaking a stiff cement specimen of stiffness 250 kN/m (ii) gentle grasping of a soft zebrafish embryo of stiffness 10 N/m. Apart from manipulation, wherever it is viable, the mechanisms are interfaced with a haptic device such that the user’s experience of manipulation is enriched with force feedback. An auxiliary study on the characterization of cells is carried out using a micro¬pipette based aspiration technique. Using this technique, cells existing in different conditions such as perfusion, therapeutic medicines, etc., are mechanically characterized. This study is to qualitatively compare aspiration-based techniques with compliant gripper-based manipulation techniques. A compliant gripper-based manipulation technique is beneficial in estimating the bulk stiffness of the cells and can be extended to estimate the distribution of Young’s modulus in the interior. This estimation is carried out by solving an inverse problem. A previously reported scheme to solve over specified boundary conditions of an elastic object—in this case a cell—is improved, and the improved scheme is validated with the help of macro-scale specimens.

Modern tunnel boring machines require large drilling forces, and need to be fastened in the tunnel to generate such forces. The fastening of tunnel boring machines is traditionally accomplished by means of hydraulic cylinders that fasten and position the machine prior to drilling, known as grippers. A problem encountered in this solution is that the hydraulics suffers from an undesirably low stiffness, which makes the mechanism sensitive to vibrations generated by the drilling. Replacing the hydraulics with some kind of mechanical force transfer mechanismis believed to reduce said sensitivity. The purpose of the thesis is to develop a new gripper concept, evaluate if it is possible to substitute any of the hydraulic actuators with a mechanical counterpart, and assess if a mechanical solution increases the vertical stiffness of the grippers. The CAD-models were created in PRO/Engineer Wildfire 4.0 and the FEM-analysis was conducted using ANSYS Workbench 14.0. The calculations were done using MATLAB R2012a. With an extensive pre-study conducted, a number of gripper concepts were generated and evaluated (using a Pugh´s matrix), and a suggestion of a mechanical force transfer mechanism was created using the information from the concept evaluation. The most suitable force transfer method turned out to be a jack screw mechanism, thanks to its high load carrying capacity and self-locking characteristics. The jack screw will be powered using a hydraulic motor, ashydraulic power is easily accessible on the tunnel boring machine. The analysis conducted points to a significant increase in vertical stiffness, but also to an added degree of complexity which might not be fully desirable. An analysis of the dynamic behavior of the system would also be necessary to fully understand the component interactions. / Moderna tunnelborrningsmaskiner fordrar höga borrkrafter, och behöver fixeras i tunnelgången för att generera dessa. Inspänningen av tunnelborrningsmaskiner görs traditionellt med hydrauliska cylindrar som fixerar och positionerar maskinen inför borrningen, så kallade gripprar. Ett problem med denna metod är att hydrauliken har en viss vekhet som gör konstruktionen känslig för de vibrationer som borrningen skapar, och som eventuellt tros kunna reduceras med en mekanisk lösning. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att ta fram ett nytt gripperkoncept och utreda om det är möjligt att ersätta någon del av hydrauliken med en mekanisk kraftöverföring, för att öka denvertikala styvheten hos mekanismen. CAD-modellerna av koncepten skapades i PRO/EngineerWildfire 4.0 och FEM-analysen gjordes i ANSYS Workbench 14.0. För beräkningarna användes MATLAB R2012a. Med en omfattande förstudie genomförd togs ett antal gripperkoncept fram och utvärderades (med hjälp av Pughs matris), och ett förslag på en mekanisk kraftöverföringsmekanism genererades. Den mest lämpliga kraftöverföringen visade sig vara en skruvdomkraftsanordning,tack vare dess höga lastkapacitet och självhämmande beteende. Mekanismen avses drivas av en hydraulisk motor, då det är en kraftkälla som är lättillgänglig på maskinen. Analysen pekar på att styvheten i konstruktionen kan ökas avsevärt med en mekanisk kraftöverföring, men en sådan tillför också en viss komplexitet till konstruktionen som kanske inte är önskvärd. En analys av det dynamiska beteendet hos konstruktionen är också nödvändig för att till fullo kunna förutse mekanismens beteende.

American publishers of indecent books from 1840 to 1890 were not outsiders to the printing trades. They should be seen instead as entrepreneurs whose technological practices and business strategies were largely representative of the diversity within American publishing. Books prohibited or later destroyed because of their content survived in a relatively wide variety of forms in the hands of rare book collectors, making such artifacts perhaps even more important for the study of industrial practices than literary works collected in greater numbers by research institutions. Those rare artifacts make available long-lost details about the men and women who manufactured print at the boundaries of social propriety, the production technologies they employed, and the place of difficult-to-research publishers in the American book trades. Conservation, papermaking, illustrations, printing, and typefounding are as important to the history of American erotica as the more famous prosecutions led by Anthony Comstock. Focusing on works considered indecent by the nineteenth-century bibliographer Henry Spencer Ashbee, this dissertation integrates the political economy of print with an analysis of the material forms of semi-erotic and obscene books. Surviving artifacts offer evidence about regional production styles and the ways that fiber selection, and particularly the use of straw in low-quality papers, influenced the prevalence of yellow wrappers for ephemeral works. Printer skill levels and capitalization can sometimes be determined through the presence of gripper marks on printed sheets. Reconstructing and contextualizing the technological practices of these publishers can create new tools for bibliographical analysis, an accessible source of information about technical processes for general historians, and a wealth of data about publishers such as William Berry, whose role in networks of erotica in nineteenth-century America has only recently begun to be appreciated.

In this thesis study, a two-fingered gripper and a four-fingered multipurpose gripper are developed and manufactured. In addition to development of robotic hands, computer control hardware and software are also developed for computer control of both hands. The two-fingered gripper is designed for a specially defined pick and place operation. Its task is to pick a cylindrical work piece and place it in the appropriate position in a flexible manufacturing cell. Pneumatic actuator is used for power generation and mechanical links are used for power transmission. Fourfingered gripper is designed as a multipurpose gripper. The task is not predefined for this gripper, so, human hand and previous dexterous hands are taken as model during design. It consists of 3 fingers and a thumb. It has 1 degree of freedom for every finger and thumb. Pneumatic actuators are also used for this gripper. Rope and pulley system is used for the power transmission mechanism. Structures of both hands are manufactured from 5083 series aluminum. Gripping force can be controlled by the pressure regulator of the pneumatic system for both hands. Computer software is developed for the control of open and close motion of the fingers. Also, a motion control card is designed and manufactured for control of the pneumatic valves.

Two inverse problems in elasticity are addressed with motivation from cellular biomechanics. The first application is computation of holding forces on a cell during its manipulation and the second application is estimation of a cell’s interior elastic mapping (i.e., estimation of inhomogeneous distribution of stiffness) using only boundary forces and displacements. It is clear from recent works that mechanical forces can play an important role in developmental biology. In this regard, we have developed a vision-based force-sensing technique to estimate forces that are acting on a cell while it is manipulated. This problem is connected to one inverse problem in elasticity known as Cauchy’s problem in elasticity. Geometric nonlinearity under noisy displacement data is accounted while developing the solution procedures for Cauchy’s problem. We have presented solution procedures to the Cauchy’s problem under noisy displacement data. Geometric nonlinearity is also considered in order to account large deformations that the mechanisms (grippers) undergo during the manipulation. The second inverse problem is connected to elastic mapping of the cell. We note that recent works in biomechanics have shown that the disease state can alter the gross stiffness of a cell. Therefore, the pertinent question that one can ask is that which portion (for example Nucleus, cortex, ER) of the elastic property of the cell is majorly altered by the disease state. Mathematically, this question (estimation of inhomogeneous properties of cell) can be answered by solving an inverse elastic boundary value problem using sets of force-displacements boundary measurements. We address the theoretical question of number of boundary data sets required to solve the inverse boundary value problem.

The aim of this thesis is to create the design of a robotic workstation (RWS) for storing bags on a pallets with a capacity of 600 bags per hour. As an introduction to the issues of solved task, the introductory part of the thesis deals with a general information about industrial robots, theories ofdesigning RWS and palletization. For the suggested workstation it is given to have one pickup place from the roller conveyor and two unloading places. Within the RWS it is used belt, roller and chain conveyors as a peripheral device for conveying bags and pallets. There are two variants of RWS created for the possibility of technically - economic assessment. Solution for the security and the ergonomy of the workplace are an integral part of the study. Selected components of RWS have their risk analysis carried out. There is also the draft of a robot gripper mentioned, including assembly drawing. In conclussion there is calculation of returning of funds invested in the construction of RWS. Drawings of robotized workplace disposition, schemes of pneumatic and electrical connections and block diagram of the control system of RWS are included as attachments.

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