This review comprises a detailed survey of ongoing methodologies for soft actuators, highlighting approaches suitable for nanometer- to centimeter-scale robotic applications. Soft robots present a special design challenge in that their actuation and sensing mechanisms are often highly integrated with the robot body and overall functionality. When less than a centimeter, they belong to an even more special subcategory of robots or devices, in that they often lack on-board power, sensing, computation, and control. Soft, active materials are particularly well suited for this task, with a wide range of stimulants and a number of impressive examples, demonstrating large deformations, high motion complexities, and varied multifunctionality. Recent research includes both the development of new materials and composites, as well as novel implementations leveraging the unique properties of soft materials.

Soft Actuators for Small-Scale Robotics.

Recent advances in nonlinear passive vibration isolators

Structural systems often show nonlinear behavior under severe excitations generated by natural hazards. In that condition, the restoring force becomes highly nonlinear showing significant hysteresis. The hereditary nature of this nonlinear restoring force indicates that the force cannot be described as a function of the instantaneous displacement and velocity. Accordingly, many hysteretic restoring force models were developed to include the time dependent nature using a set of differential equations. This survey contains a review of the past, recent developments and implementations of the Bouc-Wen model which is used extensively in modeling the hysteresis phenomenon in the dynamically excited nonlinear structures.

The Hysteresis Bouc-Wen Model, a Survey

Leakage in water distribution systems is an important issue which is affecting water companies and their customers worldwide. It is therefore no surprise that it has attracted a lot of attention by both practitioners and researchers over the past years. Most of the leakage management related methods developed so far can be broadly classified as follows: (1) leakage assessment methods which are focusing on quantifying the amount of water lost; (2) leakage detection methods which are primarily concerned with the detection of leakage hotspots and (3) leakage control models which are focused on the effective control of current and future leakage levels. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the above methods with the objective to identify the current state-of-the-art in the field and to then make recommendations for future work. The review ends with the main conclusion that despite all the advancements made in the past, there is still a lot of scope and need for further work, especially in area of rea...

A review of methods for leakage management in pipe networks

A hysteresis model for the field-dependent damping force of a magnetorheological damper

Smart fluid devices are now seen as an attractive solution to vibration damping problems. They offer superior performance compared to passive devices, without involving the cost, weight and complexity of fully active damping strategies. However, the inherent non-linearity of smart fluid dampers makes it difficult to fully exploit their capabilities, due the problems in applying an effective control strategy. In the past much of the research focused on complex controllers involving techniques such as neural networks and fuzzy logic. In recent years, however, an alternative approach has been adopted, whereby classical control techniques are used to linearise the damper's response. As a result some applications for smart fluid damping now use combinations of proportional, integral, or derivative control methods. However, it appears that these controllers can become unstable in much the same way as for a truly linear system. In order to investigate this instability it is suggested that a sufficiently accurate model of the damper's response is required, so that the onset of instability can be reproduced numerically.
In this contribution, a model updating technique is described whereby an existing ER damper model is updated in line with experimental data. The paper begins with an overview of the experimental test facility and the modeling approach. The updating algorithm is then described, and it is shown how the updated model improves significantly on the accuracy of the model predictions.

Prediction of ER long-stroke damper response: model updating methods

Industrial robot arms experience position inaccuracies due to the output cogging torques of the DC servomotors. Therefore, in an attempt to resolve these position problems, an electro-rheological (ER) robotic system is considered as an actuator to drive the robot arm rapidly in both directions. This ER robotic system consists of two ER clutches, an ER brake, a gear train, an encoder and a robot arm. The ER clutches produce clockwise and anti-clockwise rotations. The ER brake decelerates and halts the robot arm. The main aim of this paper is to validate a controller model of the ER robotic arm. Next, a trend study is used to determine the optimum working conditions of the ER actuated-robotic arm. The robotic displacements of both the ER rotary devices and the commercial DC servomotors are compared in terms of position accuracy and speed of response. Finally, the repeatability of the robotic end positions is examined in order to determine the importance of the ER brake.

An electro-rheological (er) robotic system: controller validation, trend study, comparison with dc servomotors, position repeatability

Robot arm positioning is an important factor in the robotic process. However, the robot manipulator experiences positioning inaccuracies. This positioning error is due to the dynamic inefficiencies of its actuator: DC servomotor. In a bid to resolve this actuator problem, an electro-rheological (ER) clutch-brake mechanism is employed. This clutch-brake mechanism can actuate and halt the motion of the robot arm. This rotary mechanism consists of two similar clutches that are driven to rotate in the opposite directions and an individual ER brake that provides braking torques to halt the manipulator at the required positions. The main aim of this paper is to establish a control strategy for the ER actuated robot arm by means of model validation with the experimental results. This study is conducted to understand the ER robotic positioning control for future applications.

Robot Arm Control Using AN Electro-Rheological (er) Clutch-Brake Mechanism:. Model Validation

Magnetorheological (MR) fluids provide a novel solution to adapt damping levels in aircraft landing gear, so that optimal performance can be achieved over a wide range of conditions. The present study helps to demonstrate the feasibility of this solution by sizing an MR valve within the constraints of an existing commercial (passive) oleopneumatic shock strut. Previous work on MR landing gear has tended to focus on potential control strategies rather than design and sizing issues. However these latter aspects are of great importance in aircraft systems, where space and weight are vital design constraints. To aid the sizing analysis performed in this study, accurate quasi-steady and dynamic impact models of passive and MR oleopneumatic landing gears are developed. The model is validated against experimental data incorporating the passive device, which is then used as a benchmark for the MR designs and to assess fail safety. The dynamic model is particularly important as it incorporates fluid compressibility, which may be a significant contributor to the overall response of the device in an impact scenario. The present study also aims to give further insight into high velocity MR valve flow, which will be inevitable during impulsive loading. This area remains largely unexplored and particular importance is given to valve Reynolds number since turbulent values are known to reduce device performance. The feasibility of an MR landing gear will be largely dependant on these factors.© (2005) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Design and performance optimization of magneto-rheological oleopneumatic landing gear

The potential of smart fluids (both electrorheological (ER), and magnetorheological (MR)) in damping devices is now well-known. Whilst both types of fluid can suffer from drawbacks such as sedimentation, fluid degradation, and problems with containment or sealing, these issues are not insurmountable and solutions have been engineered such that practical damping devices are now commercially available. However, one drawback is that the force-velocity characteristics of a smart fluid device are inherently non-linear, possessing the general form associated with a Bingham plastic. This means that while practical devices have the potential to modify rapidly their behavior, it can be difficult automatically to adjust the device's response. For example, much research has focused more complex closed loop control strategies such as neural networks, H∞ and sliding mode controllers. This is in contrast to research at the University of Sheffield, where it has been shown that proportional closed-loop control can provide an elegant means of linearising the device's behavior. More recent work has demonstrated that this control strategy can be used to perform arbitrary shaping of the device's force-velocity characteristic. In the present contribution the authors will demonstrate by simulation the practical significance of this phenomena, using the classical mass-isolator problem as an example.

Roger Stanway

Papers

Prediction of ER long-stroke damper response: model updating methods

An electro-rheological (er) robotic system: controller validation, trend study, comparison with dc servomotors, position repeatability

Robot Arm Control Using AN Electro-Rheological (er) Clutch-Brake Mechanism:. Model Validation

Design and performance optimization of magneto-rheological oleopneumatic landing gear

Experimental testing and control of an ER long-stroke vibration damper