The control of humanoid robot hands has historically been expensive due to the cost of precision actuators. This paper presents the design and implementation of a low-cost air muscle actuated humanoid hand developed at Curtin University of Technology. This hand offers 10 individually controllable degrees of freedom ranging from the elbow to the fingers, with overall control handled through a co...

A novel mechanism concept for a fully flexible, motordriven, cam-actuated engine valve was reported in [1]. It is capable of i) variable valve timing, ii) variable lift and iii) individual valve phasing control. To check the validity of the concept in real engine environment, engine tests were performed using a single-cylinder of a modified sixcylinder 3.8-liter production engine, with the new ...

Pneumatic-actuated valves are critical components in many applications, including cryogenic propellant loading for space operations. For these components, failures need to be predicted so that components can be repaired to ensure mission success, i.e., health monitoring and fault prognostics is required. In order to develop, test, mature, and deploy valve prognostics algorithms, we have develop...

An implantable manually-actuated drug delivery device, consisting of a refillable drug reservoir, flexible cannula, check valve, and suture tabs, was investigated as a new approach for delivering pharmaceuticals to treat chronic ocular diseases. Devices are fabricated by molding and bonding three structured layers of polydimethylsiloxane. A 30 gauge non-coring needle was used to refill the rese...

An easy to implement, thermally-actuated, noninvasive method for flow control in microfluidic devices is described. This technique takes advantage of the phase change of the working liquid itself-the freezing and melting of a portion of a liquid slug-to noninvasively close and open flow passages (referred to as a phase change valve). The valve was designed for use in a miniature diagnostic syst...

In this study, we successfully designed and tested a new micropump that utilizes an active check valve and bottom-protruding structure to achieve sample transportation. We performed theoretical analyses and numerical simulations to determine the optimal location of the active check valve. We also experimentally analyzed variations in the generated flow rate with respect to the pneumatic frequen...