Robotics applications

Polymer gels In response to pH changes in their enviromnent, materials derived from poly(acrylonitrile) will swell or shrink in a slow analogy to muscle action, thought to have robotic applications. 

Avdeef and Bucher [24] investigated the use of universal buffers in potentiomet-ric titrations. Recently, such a buffer system, formulated with several of the Good components, has been designed specifically for robotic applications, where automated pH control in 96-well microtiter plates is required, with minimal interference to the UV measurement [48]. This universal buffer has a nearly perfectly linear pH response to additions of standard titrant in the pH 3-10 region [8, 48]. 

Sample decomposition is not frequently automated because of difficulties caused by the long exposure times needed and the corrosive environments they produce. Hawk and Kingston [11] have described recent advances which make this preparative step more suitable for automation and particularly suited to robotic applications. 

As previously mentioned, the nickel—titanium alloys have been the most widely used shape memory alloys. This family of nickel—titanium alloys is known as Nitinol (Nickel Titanium Naval Ordnance Laboratory in honor of the place where this material behavior was first observed). Nitinol have been used for military, medical, safety, and robotics applications. Specific usages include hydraulic lines capable of F-14 fighter planes, medical tweezers, anchors for attaching tendons to bones, eyeglass frames, underwire brassieres, and antiscalding valves used in water faucets and shower heads (38,39). Nitinol can be used in robotics actuators and micromanipulators that simulate human muscle motion. The ability of Nitinol to exert a smooth, controlled force when activated is a mass advantage of this material family (5). 

Header systems with manual or automatic dispensing valves have been designed to carry adhesives and sealants over long distances within the plant. Distances of as much as 300 ft are not uncommon with drops at points of application. Figure 17.7 shows a modular header system. Adhesives and sealants are nearly ideal materials for application by robots. Robotic application is commonly used in the automobile industry to increase quality and to reduce labor and material cost.7,8... 

High-viscosity liquids, pastes, and mastics are ideal adhesives for application by robots. Robotic application is commonly used in industries such as automotive and consumer products to increase quality and to reduce labor and material costs.12,13... 

Margrey KS, Martinez A, Vaughn DP, Felder RA. A standard clinical instrument interface for robotic applications, Clin Chem 1990 36 1572-5. 

Figure 10.10. Schematic of a rectilinear robotic application. [Reprinted with permission from LC-GC magazine, from Majors and Holden (1993)].

Kim, K.J. and Tadokoro, S. (eds) (2007) Electroactive Polymers for Robotics Applications. Artificial Muscles and Sensors, Springer-Verlag, London. 

Pharmaceutical analysis [18-20] has undoubtedly been the most receptive field to robotic applications, probably due to the suitability of robots for quality control operations. To a much lesser extent, robots have been used in environmental monitoring, in the treatment of biological samples (clinical chemistry) and in elemental organic and inorganic analyses. It is worth pointing out the small number of references available on the use of robotic stations for the analysis of foodstuffs or materials of industrial interest. 

Kim KJ, Tadokoro S (2007) Electroactive polymers for robotic applications artificial muscles and sensors. Springer, London... 

Choi HR, Jung KM, Kwak JW, Lee SW, Kim HM, Jeon JW, Nam JD (2003) Multiple degree-of-freedom digital soft actuator for robotic applications. Proc SPIE 5051 262... 

BioMEMS, BioNEMS, or industrial applications requiring soft sensors, actuators, and micro or nano-scale robotic applications. 

Plaisant et al. [2000] developed a robotic toy with which children could interactively create and replay stories assisting with physical and developmental problems. Yanco et al. [2004] evaluated human-robot interaction at a robotics competition using a tailored set of usability criteria developed by Scholtz [2002] that can be applied to a broad range of robotic applications. 

Figure 9 Robotized application of a hem flange adhesive on a rotary table. 

For trilateration techniques acoustic, microwave and optical sources are applied. For high precision engineering surveys generally laser distance measuring devices are used. Devices measuring without a reflector are of special interest. Especially, this radar type sensor may be expected to become an efficient tool for robotic applications. Submillimetre resolution seems to be possible in the near future. 

Another area for force-controlled operation is in operations where two or more robots shall handle one object simultaneously by coordinated movements. Force control can here offer valuable information about the state of the task to be performed. This type of robot applications is still in the early development stage. 

Typical areas of robotic applications in industry today are as follows ... 

In this chapter, we review the achievements of healthcare robotics in recent decades. We first discuss robotic systems for surgical operations that improve patient safety. We then review physical therapy training/assistive robots for disabled and aging people. Here, we exclude prostheses, orthoses, and robotic transportation assistance devices owing to space limitations but these areas are also considered important in terms of robotics applications. Finally, we conclude the chapter by discussing challenges facing biomedical robotics. 

K. Hwang, W. Hsiao, G. Shing, K. Chen, Rapid Prototyping Platform for Robotics Applications, IEEE Transactions on Education, 54 (2011) 236-246. 

In Chapter 9, we move on to discuss a few device and robotic applications of EAP materials, by drawing heavily on the advances in material development and modeling that are discussed in prior chapters. These application examples include a robotic fish propelled by an IPMC tail, an IPMC energy harvester, an IPMC-based valveless pump, a conjugated polymer petal-driven micropump, and a synthetic elastomer actuator-enabled robotic finger. Most discussions of these examples are supported with extensive experimental results. 

DE actuators have broad applications in areas such as robots, mi-cro/milli devices as presented in [Bar-Cohen (2004) Carpi et al. (2007a) Kim and Tadokoro (2007)]. So far, many configurations of actuators have been proposed such as planar devices, tubes, rolls, folds, and stacks etc. Accordingly, a quick widening of the affordable range of robotic applications is expected to occur in the near future. However, the actuator performance... 

In this chapter, we extend and apply the results on EAP materials and models to a few device and robotic applications. A robotic fish propelled by an IPMC caudal fin is first considered in Section 9.1. The use of IPMC for low-frequency energy harvesters is studied in Section 9.2. The design of an IPMC-enabled valveless pump is discussed in Section 9.3. We then present a novel micropump actuated by conjugated polymer petals, supported by both analytical and experimental results. Finally, in Section 9.5 we investigate the design, prototyping, and control of a robotic finger powered by dielectric elastomer actuators. 

IPMCs have been proposed for a number of biomedical and robotic applications [Chen et al. (2007a) Kamamichi et al. (2006) Shahinpoor and Kim... 

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