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Description
This dissertation introduces and examines Soft Curved Reconfigurable Anisotropic Mechanisms (SCRAMs) as a solution to address actuation, manufacturing, and modeling challenges in the field of soft robotics, with the aim of facilitating the broader implementation of soft robots in various industries. SCRAM systems utilize the curved geometry of thin elastic

This dissertation introduces and examines Soft Curved Reconfigurable Anisotropic Mechanisms (SCRAMs) as a solution to address actuation, manufacturing, and modeling challenges in the field of soft robotics, with the aim of facilitating the broader implementation of soft robots in various industries. SCRAM systems utilize the curved geometry of thin elastic structures to tackle these challenges in soft robots. SCRAM devices can modify their dynamic behavior by incorporating reconfigurable anisotropic stiffness, thereby enabling tailored locomotion patterns for specific tasks. This approach simplifies the actuation of robots, resulting in lighter, more flexible, cost-effective, and safer soft robotic systems. This dissertation demonstrates the potential of SCRAM devices through several case studies. These studies investigate virtual joints and shape change propagation in tubes, as well as anisotropic dynamic behavior in vibrational soft twisted beams, effectively demonstrating interesting locomotion patterns that are achievable using simple actuation mechanisms. The dissertation also addresses modeling and simulation challenges by introducing a reduced-order modeling approach. This approach enables fast and accurate simulations of soft robots and is compatible with existing rigid body simulators. Additionally, this dissertation investigates the prototyping processes of SCRAM devices and offers a comprehensive framework for the development of these devices. Overall, this dissertation demonstrates the potential of SCRAM devices to overcome actuation, modeling, and manufacturing challenges in soft robotics. The innovative concepts and approaches presented have implications for various industries that require cost-effective, adaptable, and safe robotic systems. SCRAM devices pave the way for the widespread application of soft robots in diverse domains.
ContributorsJiang, Yuhao (Author) / Aukes, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Berman, Spring (Committee member) / Lee, Hyunglae (Committee member) / Marvi, Hamidreza (Committee member) / Srivastava, Siddharth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
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Description
Recent advancements in external memory based neural networks have shown promise

in solving tasks that require precise storage and retrieval of past information. Re-

searchers have applied these models to a wide range of tasks that have algorithmic

properties but have not applied these models to real-world robotic tasks. In this

thesis, we present

Recent advancements in external memory based neural networks have shown promise

in solving tasks that require precise storage and retrieval of past information. Re-

searchers have applied these models to a wide range of tasks that have algorithmic

properties but have not applied these models to real-world robotic tasks. In this

thesis, we present memory-augmented neural networks that synthesize robot navigation policies which a) encode long-term temporal dependencies b) make decisions in

partially observed environments and c) quantify the uncertainty inherent in the task.

We extract information about the temporal structure of a task via imitation learning

from human demonstration and evaluate the performance of the models on control

policies for a robot navigation task. Experiments are performed in partially observed

environments in both simulation and the real world
ContributorsSrivatsav, Nambi (Author) / Ben Amor, Hani (Thesis advisor) / Srivastava, Siddharth (Committee member) / Tong, Hanghang (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018