The ability to collect valuable data concerning the stress, strains, and shape profiles of aircraft and aircraft components during flight is important to fields such as structural health monitoring, gust alleviation, and flutter control. A research interest in the form of a NASA Phase I SBIR called for possible systems that would be able to take accurate shape sensing data on a flexible wing aircraft. In a joint venture between Luna Technologies Inc. and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University a flexible wing wind tunnel model was designed and constructed as a test article for the Luna Technologies Inc. fiber optic shape sensing system. In order to prove the capability of a fiber optic shape sensing system in a wind tunnel environment a flexible wing test article was constructed. The wing deflections and twists of the test article were modeled using a vortex lattice method called Tornado combined with simple beam theories. The beam theories were linear beam theories and the stiffness of the composite bodies was supplied by static testing of the test articles. The code was iterative in that it ran the VLM code to estimate the forces and moments on the wing and these were applied to a linear beam which gave the wing a new geometry which in turn was run through the VLM. The wind tunnel model was constructed at Virginia Tech using 3-D printing techniques for the fuselage and foam and fiberglass for the wings. On the bottom surface of the wings the Luna Technologies Inc. fiber optic shape sensing fiber was bonded along the leading and tailing edges. The swept-wing test article was experimentally tested in the Virginia Tech 6'x6' Stability Wind Tunnel at various airspeeds and the VLM based code results were in agreement, within margins of error and uncertainty, with the experimental results. The agreement of the analytical and experimental results verified the viability of using an iterative VLM code in combination with simple beam theories as a quick and relatively accurate approximation method for preliminary design and testing. The tests also showed that a fiber optic shape sensing system can be sufficiently tested in a wind tunnel environment, and if applied carefully could perhaps in the future provide useful shape and strain measurements. / Master of Science

Continuum manipulators which are robot limbs inspired by trunks, snakes, and tentacles, represent a promising field in robotic manipulation research. They are well known for their compliance, as they can conform to the shape of objects they interact with. Furthermore, they also benefit from improved dexterity and reduced weight compared to traditional rigid manipulators. The current state of the art continuum robots typically consists of a bulky pneumatic or tendon-driven actuation system at the base, hindering their scalability. Additionally, they tend to sag due to their own weight and are weak in the torsional direction, limiting their performance under external load. This work presents an origami-inspired cable-driven continuum manipulator module that offers low-cost, light-weight, and is inherently safe for human-robot interaction. This dissertation includes contributions in the design of the modular and torsionally strong continuum robot, the motion planning and control of the system, and finally the embedded sensing to close the loop providing robust feedback.

Continuum manipulators which are robot limbs inspired by trunks, snakes, and tentacles, represent a promising field in robotic manipulation research. They are well known for their compliance, as they can conform to the shape of objects they interact with. Furthermore, they also benefit from improved dexterity and reduced weight compared to traditional rigid manipulators. The current state of the art continuum robots typically consists of a bulky pneumatic or tendon-driven actuation system at the base, hindering their scalability. Additionally, they tend to sag due to their own weight and are weak in the torsional direction, limiting their performance under external load. This work presents an origami-inspired cable-driven continuum manipulator module that offers low-cost, light-weight, and is inherently safe for human-robot interaction. This dissertation includes contributions in the design of the modular and torsionally strong continuum robot, the motion planning and control of the system, and finally the embedded sensing to close the loop providing robust feedback.

Les objets déformables sont omniprésents dans notre vie quotidienne. Chaque jour, nous manipulons des vêtements dans des configurations innombrables pour nous habiller, nouons les lacets de nos chaussures, cueillons des fruits et des légumes sans les endommager pour notre consommation et plions les reçus dans nos portefeuilles. Toutes ces tâches impliquent de manipuler des objets déformables et peuvent être exécutées sans problème par une personne. Toutefois, les robots n'ont pas encore atteint le même niveau de dextérité. Contrairement aux objets rigides, que les robots sont maintenant capables de manipuler avec des performances proches de celles des humains; les objets déformables doivent être contrôlés non seulement pour les positionner, mais aussi pour définir leur forme. Cette contrainte supplémentaire, relative au contrôle de la forme d’un objet, rend les techniques utilisées pour les objets rigides inapplicables aux objets déformables. En outre, le comportement des objets déformables diffère largement entre eux, par exemple: la forme d’un câble et des vêtements est considérablement affectée par la gravité, alors que celle-ci n’affecte pas la configuration d’autres objets déformables tels que des produits alimentaires. Ainsi, différentes approches ont été proposées pour des classes spécifiques d’objets déformables.Dans cette thèse, nous cherchons à remédier à ces lacunes en proposant une approche modulaire pour détecter la forme d'un objet pendant qu'il est manipulé par un robot. La modularité de cette approche s’inspire d’un paradigme de programmation qui s’applique de plus en plus au développement de logiciels en robotique et vise à apporter des solutions plus générales en séparant les fonctionnalités en composants. Ces composants peuvent ensuite être interchangés en fonction de la tâche ou de l'objet concerné. Cette stratégie est un moyen modulaire de suivre la forme d'objets déformables.Pour valider la stratégie proposée, nous avons implémenté trois applications différentes. Deux applications portaient exclusivement sur l'estimation de la déformation de l'objet à l'aide de données tactiles ou de données issues d’un capteur d’effort. La troisième application consistait à contrôler la déformation d'un objet. Une évaluation de la stratégie proposée, réalisée sur un ensemble d'objets élastiques pour les trois applications, montre des résultats prometteurs pour une approche qui n'utilise pas d'informations visuelles et qui pourrait donc être améliorée de manière significative par l'ajout de cette modalité. / Deformable objects are ubiquitous in our daily lives. On a given day, we manipulate clothes into uncountable configurations to dress ourselves, tie the shoelaces on our shoes, pick up fruits and vegetables without damaging them for our consumption and fold receipts into our wallets. All these tasks involve manipulating deformable objects and can be performed by an able person without any trouble, however robots have yet to reach the same level of dexterity. Unlike rigid objects, where robots are now capable of handling objects with close to human performance in some tasks; deformable objects must be controlled not only to account for their pose but also their shape. This extra constraint, to control an object's shape, renders techniques used for rigid objects mainly inapplicable to deformable objects. Furthermore, the behavior of deformable objects widely differs among them, e.g. the shape of a cable and clothes are significantly affected by gravity while it might not affect the configuration of other deformable objects such as food products. Thus, different approaches have been designed for specific classes of deformable objects.In this thesis we seek to address these shortcomings by proposing a modular approach to sense the shape of an object while it is manipulated by a robot. The modularity of the approach is inspired by a programming paradigm that has been increasingly been applied to software development in robotics and aims to achieve more general solutions by separating functionalities into components. These components can then be interchanged based on the specific task or object at hand. This provides a modular way to sense the shape of deformable objects.To validate the proposed pipeline, we implemented three different applications. Two applications focused exclusively on estimating the object's deformation using either tactile or force data, and the third application consisted in controlling the deformation of an object. An evaluation of the pipeline, performed on a set of elastic objects for all three applications, shows promising results for an approach that makes no use of visual information and hence, it could greatly be improved by the addition of this modality.