Stress fibers and focal adhesions are complex protein arrays that produce, transmit and sense mechanical tension. Evidence accumulated over many years led to the conclusion that mechanical tension generated within stress fibers contributes to the assembly of both stress fibers themselves and their associated focal adhesions. However, several lines of evidence have recently been presented agains...

Assembly and stability of mitotic spindle is governed by the interplay of various intra-cellular forces, e.g. the forces generated by motor proteins by sliding overlapping anti-parallel microtubules (MTs) polymerized from the opposite centrosomes, the interaction of kinetochores with MTs, and the interaction of MTs with the chromosomes arms. We study the mechanical behavior and stability of spi...

The representations of assembly knowledge and assembly sequences are crucial in assembly planning, where the size of parts involved is a significant and often prohibitive difficulty. Zero-suppressed binary decision diagram (ZBDD) is an efficient form to represent and manipulate the sets of combination, and appears to give improved results for large-scale combinatorial optimization problems. In ...

Bio-inspired products and devices take their inspiration from nature [Gold00]. Current mechanical engineering curricula do not cover manufacturing techniques and principles needed to develop such products and devices. We have been enhancing the mechanical engineering undergraduate curriculum by integrating recent advances in the manufacturing of bioinspired products and devices through the foll...

ELASTIN IS A CONSTITUENT of connective tissue that is present in virtually all vertebrate tissues and has an especially vital role in organs that undergo repeated cycles of extension and recoil such as the arteries, lungs, and skin. Elastic fibers consist of two morphologically distinct components, the microfibrils and polymerized tropoelastin. The current view is that elastin is secreted from ...

Signi cant advances have been made in the area of macro planning for assembly operations (i.e., dividing a product into sub-assemblies, determining the sequence of assembly operations). On the contrary, the state of the art in micro planning (i.e., tool selection, path planning for tool and part movements) is rather primitive. To generate a realizable assembly plan, both macro planning and micr...

This paper presents an algorithm for the generation of mechanical assembly sequences and a proof of its correctness and completeness. The algorithm employs a relational model of assemblies. In addition to the geometry of the assembly, this model includes a representation of the attachments that bind one part to another. The problem of generating the assembly sequences is transformed into the pr...

We describe a unified approach to computeraided mechanical assembly design in which all design tasks are performed within a single computational paradigm supported by integrated design software . We have developed a prototype design environment for planar assemblies, called HIPAIR, that supports diverse design tasks . We organize the design tasks around the fundamental task of contact, analysis...

A framework for planning and supervision of robotized assembly tasks is initially presented, with emphasis on failure recovery. The approach to the integration of services and the modeling of tasks, resources and environment is briefly described. A planning strategy and domain knowledge fo r nominal plan execution is presented. Through the use of machine learning techniques, the supervision arc...

W e describe the implementation and performance of Archimedes 2, an integrated mechanical assembly planning system. Archimedes 2 includes two planners, two assembly sequence animation facilities, and an associated robotic workcell. Both planners use fully 3 dimensional data. A rudimenta y translator from high level assembly plans t o control code for the robotic workcell has also been implement...