Publication of this report does not constitute approval by NASA of the findings or conclusions contained herein. It is published for the exchange and stimulation of ideas.

Modular robot designers confront an inherent tradeoff between size and power: Smaller, more numerous modules increase the adaptability of a given volume or mass of modules – allowing the aggregate robot to take on a wider variety of configurations – but do so at the expense of the power and complexity of each module. Fewer, larger modules can incorporate more powerful actuators, more powerful b...

The pi-stacking between aromatic oligomers has been extensively studied for many years, although the notion of exploiting this phenomenon as the driving force for molecular actuation has only recently emerged. In this work we examine with MP2 and Car-Parrinello ab initio calculations the actuation properties of a novel class of thiophene-based materials introduced by Swager et al. (Adv. Mater. ...

Since precise linear actuators of a compliant parallel manipulator suffer from their inability to tolerate the transverse motion/load in the multi-axis motion, actuation isolation should be considered in the compliant manipulator design to eliminate the transverse motion at the point of actuation. This paper presents an effective design method for constructing compliant parallel manipulators wi...

We propose an electrostatically-actuated microelectromechanical digital-to-analog converter (M-DAC) device with low actuation voltage. The spring structures of the silicon-based M-DAC device were monolithically fabricated using parylene-C. Because the Young's modulus of parylene-C is considerably lower than that of silicon, the electrostatic microactuators in the proposed device require much lo...

This paper describes the design of a power supply and actuation system appropriate for position or force controlled human-scale robots. The proposed approach utilizes a liquid monopropellant to generate hot gas, which is utilized to power a pneumatic-type actuation system. A prototype of the actuation system is described, and closed-loop tracking data are shown, which demonstrate good motion co...

In this paper, a new electromagnetic actuation system is presented for magnetic nano-particles based targeted drug delivery. The system is composed of three sets of coils; each set contains two parallel coils that can generate the oriented 3D magnetic gradient field. Differential Current Coil approach is used to calculate the applied current to each coil to ensure that the gradient field, gener...

Recent developments in computer and communication technologies have led to a new type of large-scale resource-constrained wireless embedded control systems. It is desirable in these systems to limit the sensor and control computation and/or communication to instances when the system needs attention. However, classical sampled-data control is based on performing sensing and actuation periodicall...

This paper presents the work realized on a new RF MEMS design for micro-switch application. This design relies on the separation between the commutation and actuation electrodes for improving the switch lifetime. The design can reduce electrical charging effects during the actuation by preventing a direct contact with the actuation electrode. The proposed structure is optimized by addressing ke...

Droplet microfluidics (DMF) is a fluidic handling technology that enables precision control over dispensing and subsequent manipulation of droplets in the volume range of microliters to picoliters, on a micro-fabricated device. There are several different droplet actuation methods, all of which can generate external stimuli, to either actively or passively control the shape and positioning of f...