Search Results (57)

This study presents a soft exoskeleton system designed to enhance the safety of electrical maintenance personnel during tower climbing by augmenting the hand grip and providing fall prevention assistance. Inspired by biological principles, a compact, stroke-amplified, and fast-response actuator based on a spring energy storage–release mechanism was developed and evaluated through tensile and speed tests, demonstrating sufficient locking force and a fast response time of 37.5 ms. A dual-sensing module integrating pressure and flexible bending sensors was designed to detect grasping states in real time. System effectiveness was further validated through functional electrical stimulation (FES) and simulated climbing experiments. FES tests confirmed the system’s ability to maintain grasp posture under involuntary hand extension, while climbing experiments verified consistent and reliable transitions between locking and unlocking during movement. Although preliminary, these results suggest that integrating soft exoskeletons with rapid-response actuators offers a promising solution for improving grip stability and operational safety in high-risk vertical environments. Full article

Over the past two decades, our understanding of star formation has undergone a major shift, driven by a wealth of data from infrared, submillimeter and radio surveys. The emerging view depicts star formation as a hierarchical process, which predominantly occurs along filamentary structures in the interstellar medium. These structures span a wide range of spatial scales, ultimately leading to the birth of young stars, which distribute in small groups, clusters and OB associations. Given the inherently complex and dynamic nature of star formation, a comprehensive understanding of these processes can only be achieved by examining their end products—namely, the distribution and properties of young stellar populations. In the Gaia era, the nearby OB associations are now characterised with unprecedented detail, allowing for a robust understanding of their formation histories. Nevertheless, to fully grasp the mechanisms of star formation and its typical scale, it is essential to study the much larger associations, which constitute the backbones of spiral arms. The large catalogues of young open clusters that have emerged from Gaia DR3 offer a valuable resource for investigating star formation on larger spatial scales. While the cluster parameters listed in these catalogues are still subject to many uncertainties and systematic errors, ongoing improvements in data analysis and upcoming Gaia releases promise to enhance the accuracy and reliability of these measurements. This review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of recent advancements and a critical assessment of the datasets available. Full article

To simplify the grasping mechanism of drones, this paper presents a dual-function landing gear with an actively closing mechanism, designed for coaxial drones. The proposed design integrates self-locking and clutch mechanisms, enabling the landing gear to be actuated by a single motor. This novel approach eliminates the need for additional actuators, optimizing the drone’s takeoff, landing, and grasping capabilities while reducing energy consumption compared to traditional designs. Kinematic and static analyses, along with experimental evaluations, were conducted to assess the grasping performance of the mechanism. Experimental results demonstrate that the landing gear can close within 0.2 s and provide a grasping force exceeding 10 N. Compared to conventional designs, this solution offers a reliable and energy-efficient approach for dual-function drone operations. Full article

The realization of hand function reengineering using a manipulator is a research hotspot in the field of robotics. In this paper, we propose a multimodal perception and control method for a robotic hand to assist the disabled. The movement of the human hand can be divided into two parts: the coordination of the posture of the fingers, and the coordination of the timing of grasping and releasing objects. Therefore, we first used a pinhole camera to construct a visual device suitable for finger mounting, and preclassified the shape of the object based on YOLOv8; then, a filtering process using multi-frame synthesized point cloud data from miniature 2D Lidar, and DBSCAN algorithm clustering objects and the DTW algorithm, was proposed to further identify the cross-sectional shape and size of the grasped part of the object and realize control of the robot’s grasping gesture; finally, a multimodal perception and control method for prosthetic hands was proposed. To control the grasping attitude, a fusion algorithm based on information of upper limb motion state, hand position, and lesser toe haptics was proposed to realize control of the robotic grasping process with a human in the ring. The device designed in this paper does not contact the human skin, does not produce discomfort, and the completion rate of the grasping process experiment reached 91.63%, which indicates that the proposed control method has feasibility and applicability. Full article

Background/Objectives: The potential application of electromyography (EMG) as a method for precise force control in prosthetic devices is investigated, expanding on its traditional use in gesture detection. Variability in EMG signals among individuals is influenced by physiological factors such as muscle mass, body fat percentage, and subcutaneous fat, as well as demographic variables like age, gender, height, and weight. This study aims to evaluate how these factors impact EMG signal quality and force output. Methods: EMG data was normalized using the maximum voluntary contraction (MVC) method, recorded at 100%, 50%, and 25% of MVC with simultaneous grip force measurement. Physiological parameters, including fat percentage, subcutaneous fat, and muscle mass, were analyzed. An extreme gradient boosting algorithm was applied to model the relationship between EMG amplitude and grip force. Results: The findings demonstrated significant linear correlations, with r² coefficients reaching up to 0.93 and 0.83 in most cases. Muscle mass and fat levels were identified as key determinants of EMG variability, with significance coefficients ranging from 0.36592 to 0.0856 for muscle mass and 0.281918 to 0.06001 for fat levels. Conclusions: These results underscore the potential of EMG to enhance force control in prosthetic limbs, particularly in tasks such as grasping, holding, and releasing objects. Incorporating body composition factors into EMG-based prediction algorithms offers a refined approach to improving the precision and functionality of prosthetic control systems for complex motor tasks. Full article

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most prevalent chronic joint disorder and is a major cause of disability among the elderly population. The degeneration and damage of articular cartilage associated with OA can result in a diminished range of motion in joints, subsequently impacting fundamental activities such as ambulation, standing, and grasping objects. In severe cases, it may culminate in disability. Traditional pharmacological treatments are often accompanied by various side effects, while invasive surgical procedures increase the risk of infection and thrombosis. Consequently, identifying alternative new methods for OA treatment remains a formidable challenge. With advancements in responsive hydrogel drug delivery platforms, an increasing number of strategies have emerged to enhance OA treatment protocols. Injectable response hydrogel drug delivery platforms show many advantages in treating OA, including improved biocompatibility, prolonged drug release duration, elevated drug loading capacity and enhanced sensitivity. This article reviews the recent progress of injectable responsive hydrogel drug delivery platform for OA treatment over the past few years. These innovative methodologies present new strategies and directions for future OA treatment while summarizing a series of challenges faced during the clinical transformation of injectable response hydrogel drug delivery platforms. Overall, injectable responsive hydrogel drug delivery platforms show great potential in treating OA, especially regarding improving drug retention time and stimulus-responsive release at the lesion sites. These innovative methods provide new hope for future OA treatment and point the way for clinical applications. Full article

Soft hydrogel grippers have attracted considerable attention due to their flexible/elastic bodies, stimuli-responsive grasping and releasing capacity, and novel applications in specific task fields. To create soft hydrogel grippers with robust grasping of various types of objects, high load capability, fast grab response, and long-time service life, researchers delve deeper into hydrogel materials, fabrication strategies, and underlying actuation mechanisms. This article provides a systematic overview of hydrogel materials used in soft grippers, focusing on materials composition, chemical functional groups, and characteristics and the strategies for integrating these responsive hydrogel materials into soft grippers, including one-step polymerization, additive manufacturing, and structural modification are reviewed in detail. Moreover, ongoing research about actuating mechanisms (e.g., thermal/electrical/magnetic/chemical) and grasping applications of soft hydrogel grippers is summarized. Some remaining challenges and future perspectives in soft hydrogel grippers are also provided. This work highlights the recent advances of soft hydrogel grippers, which provides useful insights into the development of the new generation of functional soft hydrogel grippers. Full article

In this research, five systems were developed to classify four distinct motor functions—forward hand movement (FW), grasp (GP), release (RL), and reverse hand movement (RV)—from EEG signals, using the WAY-EEG-GAL dataset where participants performed a sequence of hand movements. During preprocessing, band-pass filtering was applied to remove artifacts and focus on the mu and beta frequency bands. The initial system, a preliminary study model, explored the overall framework of EEG signal processing and classification, utilizing time-domain features such as variance and frequency-domain features such as alpha and beta power, with a KNN model for classification. Insights from this study informed the development of a baseline system, which innovatively combined the common spatial patterns (CSP) method with continuous wavelet transform (CWT) for feature extraction and employed a GoogLeNet classifier with transfer learning. This system classified six unique pairs of events derived from the four motor functions, achieving remarkable accuracy, with the highest being 99.73% for the GP–RV pair and the lowest 80.87% for the FW–GP pair in intersubject classification. Building on this success, three additional systems were developed for four-way classification. The final model, ML-CSP-OVR, demonstrated the highest intersubject classification accuracy of 78.08% using all combined data and 76.39% for leave-one-out intersubject classification. This proposed model, featuring a novel combination of CSP-OVR, CWT, and GoogLeNet, represents a significant advancement in the field, showcasing strong potential as a general system for motor imagery (MI) tasks that is not dependent on the subject. This work highlights the prominence of the research contribution by demonstrating the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed approach in achieving high classification accuracy across different motor functions and subjects. Full article

Wireless soft miniature robots have been studied for biomedical applications. However, the wireless soft miniature robots developed so far are mainly composed of synthetic polymers that do not guarantee biocompatibility and biodegradability. Additionally, current soft robots have limitations in demonstrating mobility in narrow spaces, such as blood vessels within the body, by using their flexible body. This study proposes a wireless hybrid-actuated soft miniature robot for biomedical applications. The proposed soft miniature robot consists of biodegradable chitosan and magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) and is fabricated into an eight-arm shape by laser micromachining. The soft miniature robot can implement hydrogel swelling and magnetic-actuated shape morphing by using the difference in MNP density and magnetic field responsiveness within the robot body, respectively. Furthermore, the soft miniature robot can be guided by external magnetic fields. As feasibility tests, the soft miniature robot demonstrated on-demand pick-and-place motion, grasping a bead, moving it to a desired location, and releasing it. Furthermore, in an in-channel mobility test, the flexible body of the soft miniature robot passed through a tube smaller in size than the robot itself through magnetically actuated shape morphing. These results indicate that the soft miniature robot with controllable shape change and precise magnetic-driven mobility can be a minimally invasive surgical robot for disease diagnosis and treatment. Full article

Colloidal particle research has witnessed significant advancements in the past century, resulting in a plethora of studies, novel applications, and beneficial products. This review article presents a cost-effective and low-tech method for producing Janus elastomeric particles of varied geometries, including planar films, spherical particles, and cylindrical fibers, utilizing a single elastomeric material and easily accessible chemicals. Different surface textures are attained through strain application or solvent-induced swelling, featuring well-defined wavelengths ranging from sub-microns to millimeters and offering easy adjustability. Such versatility renders these particles potentially invaluable for medical applications, especially in bacterial adhesion studies. The coexistence of “young” regions (smooth, with a small surface area) and “old” regions (wrinkled, with a large surface area) within the same material opens up avenues for biomimetic materials endowed with additional functionalities; for example, a Janus micromanipulator where micro- or nano-sized objects are grasped and transported by an array of wrinkled particles, facilitating precise release at designated locations through wrinkle pattern adjustments. This article underscores the versatility and potential applications of Janus elastomeric particles while highlighting the intriguing prospects of biomimetic materials with controlled surface textures. Full article

In recent years, the field of microrobots has exploded, yielding many exciting new functions and applications, from object grasping and release to in vivo drug transport. Smart responsive materials have had a profound impact on the field of microrobots and have given them unique functions and structures. We analyze three aspects of microrobots, in which the future development of microrobots requires more efforts to be invested, and in which smart materials play a significant role in the development of microrobots. These three aspects are smart materials for building microrobots, manufacturing methods, and the functions and applications they achieve. In this review, we discuss the deformation mechanism of materials in response to external stimuli, starting from smart materials, and discuss fabrication methods to realize microrobots, laying the theoretical foundation for future smart material-based microrobots to realize their intelligence and programmability. Full article

The development of a high-performance, low-cost, and simply fabricated flexible three-dimensional (3D) force sensor is essential for the future development of electronic skins suitable for the detection of normal and shear forces for several human motions. In this study, a sandwich-structured flexible 3D force tactile sensor based on a polyethylene-carbon composite material (velostat) is presented. The sensor has a large measuring range, namely, 0–12 N in the direction of the normal force and 0–2.6 N in the direction of the shear force. For normal forces, the sensitivity is 0.775 N⁻¹ at 0–1 N, 0.107 N⁻¹ between 1 and 3 N, and 0.003 N⁻¹ at 3 N and above. For shear forces, the measured sensitivity is 0.122 and 0.12 N⁻¹ in x- and y-directions, respectively. Additionally, the sensor exhibits good repeatability and stability after 2500 cycles of loading and releasing. The response and recovery times of the sensor are as fast as 40 and 80 ms, respectively. Furthermore, we prepared a glove-like sensor array. When grasping the object using the tactile glove, the information about the force applied to the sensing unit can be transmitted through a wireless system in real-time and displayed on a personal computer (PC). The prepared flexible 3D force sensor shows broad application prospects in the field of smart wearable devices. Full article

Uroteuthis edulis (U. edulis) is an important economic loliginid resource in the East China Sea (ECS). Its flexible life history traits enable the population to quickly adapt to changes in habitat. Understanding the early transport process helps us to grasp the habitat requirements of populations at key life history stages. In this study, particle tracing was used to simulate the early transport trajectories (within 120 days). The gradient forest method (GFM) and generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs) were used to analyze the key environmental variables that affect the early transport trajectories and the impact of environmental factors on the transport process, respectively. The results showed that spring stock tracers were transported to the northeast of the release area (Pengjiayu water) and the Pacific side of Japan. Summer stock tracers were transported to the north and northeast of the release area (Zhoushan island). Current velocity, salinity, and temperature were key environmental variables that affected the trace element ratios of spring stock at early life history stages. Mixed-layer depth (MLD), velocity, and chlorophyll a concentration (Chla) were key environmental variables for summer stock. Zonal velocity was positively correlated with the trace element ratio for spring and summer stock (0.14–0.16 m/s), while the meridional velocity showed an opposite correlation. The physical driving mechanisms of the Kuroshio warm current (or the Taiwan warm current) and the Yangtze River determine the paralarva retention location during early transportation. The differences in the dominant factors of the water environment in the retention area may affect the paralarva physiological functions and food availability. This study provides a scientific basis for a comprehensive understanding of the migration characteristics of U. edulis with different stocks. Full article

The global concern regarding the release of micropollutants (MPs) into the environment has grown significantly. Considerable amounts of persistent micropollutants are present in industrial discharges. Depending solely on a singular treatment approach is inadequate for the effective removal of MPs from wastewater due to their complex composition. The performance of different treatment methods to meet the discharge standards has been widely studied. These efforts are classified as hybrid and sequential processes. Despite their adequate performance, the optimization and industrial application of these methods could be challenging and costly. This review focuses on integrated (sequential) and hybrid processes for MP removal from actual wastewater. Furthermore, to provide a thorough grasp of the treatment approaches, the operational conditions, the source of wastewater containing MPs, and its characteristics are detailed. It is concluded that the optimal sequence to achieve the removal of MPs involves biological treatment followed by an advanced oxidation process (AOP) with a final passage through an activated carbon column. To refine this process further, a membrane unit could be added based on the desired effluent quality. Nevertheless, considering practical feasibility, this study identifies specific areas requiring additional research to implement this integrated treatment strategy effectively. Full article

In the past few decades, researchers have conducted extensive studies on cell micromanipulation methods. However, there has consistently been a lack of a micromanipulation system that excels in both precision and speed. Additionally, many of these methods rely on manual control, thus significantly reducing efficiency. In this paper, a robotized micromanipulation system employing a two-finger microhand is proposed. The microhand has a 3-DoF parallel mechanism driven by three piezoelectric actuators, enabling high-precision micromanipulation. Replacing the needle-tip end-effector with a hemispherical end-effector makes cell grasping easier and more stable. In addition, a vibration-based release method combined with gel coating is proposed to reduce the release difficulty caused by adhesion forces. Through multiple sets of experiments, we have determined the optimal grasping and releasing conditions while balancing precision, stability, and damage degree to cells. An automated cell assembly strategy based on microscopic visual feedback and pick-and-place path planning is proposed to achieve the robotized high-speed cell array. Hela cells were chosen as the operation objects, achieving a 95% success rate in grasping and a 97% success rate in releasing. A “T” letter array formed by cells was successfully assembled with an average grasp and release time of less than 0.8 s and an assembly accuracy of 4.5 μm for a single cell. This study holds significant implications for the fields of biology and medicine, presenting potential applications in tissue engineering. Full article