Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Unmanned Aerial System Design For Civil Engineering Operations – A Vip Study, Ezra Robles, Harrison Vicknair, Derek Price, Logan Westra, George Pitcock, Joshua Diamond, Bhuvan Saraswat, Jeremiah Prayor, Fon Saliki

Symposium of Student Scholars

Unmanned Aerial System Design for Civil Engineering Operations – A Case Study

The objective of the project is to design and build a modular Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) that meets the specifications set forth by United Consulting – a local civil engineering company. These specifications are achieved through three unique missions. In each mission, data is collected using different methods. These missions include land surveying, bridge structure inspection and manhole probing. The key requirements of the drone are to maintain a minimum flight time of 30 minutes and the ability to receive and transmit telemetry, photographic and video data from …

Modeling, Control And Estimation Of Reconfigurable Cable Driven Parallel Robots, Adhiti Raman Thothathri

All Dissertations

The motivation for this thesis was to develop a cable-driven parallel robot (CDPR) as part of a two-part robotic device for concrete 3D printing. This research addresses specific research questions in this domain, chiefly, to present advantages offered by the addition of kinematic redundancies to CDPRs. Due to the natural actuation redundancy present in a fully constrained CDPR, the addition of internal mobility offers complex challenges in modeling and control that are not often encountered in literature.

This work presents a systematic analysis of modeling such kinematic redundancies through the application of reciprocal screw theory (RST) and Lie algebra while …

Material Characterization And Comparison Of Sol-Gel Deposited And Rf Magnetron Deposited Lead Zirconate Titanate Thin Films, Katherine Lynne Miles

Mechanical Engineering ETDs

Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) has been a material of interest for sensor, actuator, and transducer applications in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). This is due to their favorable piezoelectric, pyroelectric and ferroelectric properties. While various methods are available to deposit PZT thin films, radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering was selected to provide high quality PZT films with the added capability of batch processing. These sputter deposited PZT films were characterized to determine their internal film stress, Young’s modulus, composition, and structure. After characterization, the sputtered PZT samples were poled using corona poling and direct poling methods. As a means of comparison, commercially …

Autonomous Vehicle For Asphalt Laying, Gilberto Gonzalez

2022 MME Undergraduate Research Symposium

Autonomous vehicles are constantly being developed and are gaining recognition from many industries to improve workplace safety and efficiency. This project intends to weaken the barrier that prevents the usage of autonomous vehicles in the workplace. To move toward this objective, this project focuses on developing a computer vision system for an autonomous utility vehicle that lays asphalt. The goal of this project is to directly address the issue of the high number of potholes in our driving roads, which create a dangerous and hazardous environment for persons that utilize motorized and non-motorized vehicles on roads. The vehicle’s computer vision …

A Machine Learning Approach To Robotic Additive Manufacturing Of Uv-Curable Polymers Using Direct Ink Writing, Luis A. Velazquez

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis presents the design and implementation of a robotic additive manufacturing system that uses ultraviolet (UV)-curable thermoset polymers. Its design considers future applications involving free-standing 3D printing by means of partial UV curing and the fabrication of samples that are reinforced with fillers or fibers to manufacture complex-shape objects.

The proposed setup integrates a custom-built extruder with a UR5e collaborative manipulator. The capabilities of the system were demonstrated using Anycubic resin formulations containing fumed silica (FS) at varying weight fractions from 2.8 to 8 wt%. To fully cure the specimens after fabrication, a UV chamber was used. Then, measurements …

Multi-Robot Symbolic Task And Motion Planning Leveraging Human Trust Models: Theory And Applications, Huanfei Zheng

All Dissertations

Multi-robot systems (MRS) can accomplish more complex tasks with two or more robots and have produced a broad set of applications. The presence of a human operator in an MRS can guarantee the safety of the task performing, but the human operators can be subject to heavier stress and cognitive workload in collaboration with the MRS than the single robot. It is significant for the MRS to have the provable correct task and motion planning solution for a complex task. That can reduce the human workload during supervising the task and improve the reliability of human-MRS collaboration. This dissertation relies …

Collaborative Robotics Strategies For Handling Non-Repetitive Micro-Drilling Tasks Characterized By Low Structural Mechanical Impedance, Xiangyu Wang

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Mechanical micro-drilling finds widespread use in diverse applications ranging from advanced manufacturing to medical surgery. This dissertation aims to develop techniques that allow programming of robots to perform effective micro-drilling tasks. Accomplishing this goal is faced with several challenges. Micro-drills suffer from frequent breakage caused from variations in drill process parameters. Micro-drilling tasks afford extremely low feed rates and almost zero tolerance for any feed rate variations. The accompanying robot programming task is made difficult as mathematical models that capture the micro-drilling process complexities and sensitive variations in micro-drill parameters are highly difficult to obtain. Therefore, an experimental approach is …

Developing A Miniature Smart Boat For Marine Research, Michael Isaac Eirinberg

Computer Engineering

This project examines the development of a smart boat which could serve as a possible marine research apparatus. The smart boat consists of a miniature vessel containing a low-cost microcontroller to live stream a camera feed, GPS telemetry, and compass data through its own WiFi access point. The smart boat also has the potential for autonomous navigation. My project captivated the interest of several members of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo’s (Cal Poly SLO) Marine Science Department faculty, who proposed a variety of fascinating and valuable smart boat applications.

Therapeutic Mechanical Horse, Cade M. Liberty, Aleya Dolorfino, Peter Philips, Zuzanna Dominik, Luke Watts

Mechanical Engineering

Jack's Helping Hand and its hippotherapy participants required a device to serve as an alternative to a live horseback riding experience that could also increase the range of riders. This would provide more clients with equine-assisted therapy that has proven to better the lives of people with both physical and mental disabilities. Horses can be unpredictable, tall, and sometimes anxiety-inducing, especially for new riders. Our group’s aim was to develop a mechanical horse that will be able to reduce these issues for equine therapy centers and the riders they help. When a rider gets to practice sitting on the horse …

Design And Control Of Next-Generation Uavs For Effectively Interacting With Environments, Caiwu Ding

Dissertations

In this dissertation, the design and control of a novel multirotor for aerial manipulation is studied, with the aim of endowing the aerial vehicle with more degrees of freedom of motion and stability when interacting with the environments. Firstly, it presents an energy-efficient adaptive robust tracking control method for a class of fully actuated, thrust vectoring unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with parametric uncertainties including unknown moment of inertia, mass and center of mass, which would occur in aerial maneuvering and manipulation. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated through simulation. Secondly, a humanoid robot arm is adopted to serve as …

Cloudbots: Autonomous Atmospheric Explorers, Akash Binoj

Honors Scholar Theses

The CloudBot is an autonomous weather balloon that operates on the principle of variable buoyancy to ascend and descend in the atmosphere. This project aims to develop a device that will collect atmospheric measurements and communicate them mid-flight. The apparatus consists of a helium-filled balloon, the robotic payload, and an air cell. The fixed-volume helium balloon at the top provides an upwards buoyancy force, while the air cell at the bottom can hold a variable amount of pressure to adjust the weight of the CloudBot. By doing so, it is able to travel in storm conditions and collect valuable atmospheric …

Automated Robotic Light Bulb Testing Platform, Agha I. Akram, Muhammad Ali Ummy

Publications and Research

The main purpose of this project is to create a functional prototype of a multilayered system that incorporates aspects of electrical, mechanical, and computer engineering technology. The main objective of the system is to be able to determine whether a light bulb is working or not. The building blocks of this system are a robotic arm that is able to slide along a rail (for added mobility), a conveyor belt, and an electromechanical device that holds and tests light bulbs. Initially, the robot arm picks up a light bulb and places it into the holder which then tests it. A …

Model Based Force Estimation And Stiffness Control For Continuum Robots, Vincent A. Aloi

Doctoral Dissertations

Continuum Robots are bio-inspired structures that mimic the motion of snakes, elephant trunks, octopus tentacles, etc. With good design, these robots can be naturally compliant and miniaturizable, which makes Continuum Robots ideal for traversing narrow complex environments. Their flexible design, however, prevents us from using traditional methods for controlling and estimating loading on rigid link robots.

In the first thrust of this research, we provided a novel stiffness control law that alters the behavior of an end effector during contact. This controller is applicable to any continuum robot where a method for sensing or estimating tip forces and pose exists. …

Control, Decision-Making, And Learning Approaches For Connected And Autonomous Driving Systems With Humans-In-The-Loop, Fangjian Li

All Dissertations

By virtue of vehicular connectivity and automation, the vehicle becomes increasingly intelligent and self-driving capable. However, no matter what automation level the vehicle can achieve, humans will still be in the loop despite their roles. First, considering the manual driving car as a disturbance to the connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), a novel string stability is proposed for mixed traffic platoons consisting of both autonomous and manual driving cars to guarantee acceptable motion fluctuation and platoon safety. Furthermore, humans are naturally considered as the rider in the passenger vehicle. A human-centered cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) is designed to improve …

Autonomous Navigator Mobile Robot Upgrade, David Sansoucy

Thinking Matters Symposium

The mobile robot platform has been developed over the course of 10 years at USM. In Spring 2020, Belle-Isle and Werner updated the previous framework by rewriting the software to use the ROS framework running on an on-board Raspberry Pi 3. They also implemented navigation using an A* motion planning algorithm and image processing. In Summer 2021, Ames incorporated Lidar and Kinect sensors onto the robot to improve its real-time navigation capabilities. He also made improvements to the power distribution systems. This project aimed to build on the ROS frameworks developed by the previous 2 teams with the main goal …

Development Of A Compliant Gripper Driven By 3 Dof Soft Robot, Derek M. Price Ii, Ricardo Ramirez, Pt Angel Tran

Symposium of Student Scholars

Industrial robots are moving toward automation, which makes it increasingly necessary to replace the functions traditionally performed by humans with robotics. Pick and place operation is a prime example of such automation. Robots that pick up and place objects mimic the human action of picking an object up and placing it in a targeted location. It has led to the development of robotic end-effectors that have a human-like feel. Grippers can be articulated in various ways depending on their application area and well-defined desired tasks. As compliant and soft links deflect more under the same load than their rigid body …

A Low-Cost And Low-Tech Solution To Test For Variations Between Multiple Offline Programming Software Packages., Steffen Wendell Bolz

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This research paper chronicles the attempt to bring forth a low-cost and low-tech testing methodology whereby multiple offline programming (OLP) software packages’ generated programs may be compared when run on industrial robots. This research was initiated by the discovery that no real research exists to test between iterations of OLP software packages and that most research for positional accuracy and/or repeatability on industrial robots is expensive and technologically intensive. Despite this, many countries’ leaders are pushing for intensive digitalization of manufacturing and Small and Mediumsized Enterprises (SMEs) are noted to be lagging in adoption of such technologies. The research consisted …

Formation Control With Bounded Controls And Collision Avoidance: Theory And Application To Quadrotor Unmanned Air Vehicles, Zachary S. Lippay

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical Engineering

This dissertation presents new results on multi-agent formation control and applies the new control algorithms to quadrotor unmanned air vehicles. First, this dissertation presents a formation control algorithm for double-integrator agents, where the formation is time varying and the agents’ controls satisfy a priori bounds (e.g., the controls accommodate actuator saturation). The main analytic results provide sufficient conditions such that all agents converge to the desired time-varying relative positions with one another and the leader, and have a priori bounded controls (if applicable). We also present results from rotorcraft experiments that demonstrate the algorithm with time-varying formations and bounded controls. …

An Experimental Study Towards Underwater Propulsion System Using Structure Borne Traveling Waves, Shreyas Suhas Gadekar

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The method of generating steady-state structure-borne traveling waves underwater in an infinite media creates abundant opportunities in the field of propulsive applications, and they are gaining attention from several researchers. This experimental study provides a framework for harnessing traveling waves in a 1D beam immersed under quiescent water using two force input methods and providing a motion to an object floating on the surface of the water.

In this study, underwater traveling waves are tailored using structural vibrations at five different frequencies in the range of 10Hz to 300Hz. The resulting fluid motion provides a propulsive thrust that moves a …

Design And Control Of Quasi-Direct Drive Actuation For Lightweight And Versatile Wearable Robots, Shuangyue Yu

Dissertations and Theses

Wearable robots have shown great potential for augmenting the physical capabilities of humans in lab settings. However, wearable robots for augmenting the physical capabilities of humans under community-based conditions are the new frontier of robotics. Furthermore, the design and control are still considered to be grand challenges for providing physical augmentation for humans. In terms of design, the state-of-the-art exoskeletons are typically rigid, bulky, and limited to lab settings. In terms of control, most of the rhythmic controllers are not versatile and are focused only on steady-state walking assistance.

The motivation behind my research is to improve both the design …

Can We Make Our Robot Play Soccer? Influence Of Collaborating With Preservice Teachers And Fifth Graders On Undergraduate Engineering Students' Learning During A Robotic Design Process (Work In Progress), Krishnanand Kaipa, Jennifer Kidd, Julia Noginova, Francisco Cima, Stacie Ringleb, Orlando Ayala, Pilar Pazos, Kristie Gutierrez, Min Jung Lee

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

This work-in-progress paper describes engineering students’ experiences in an NSF-funded project that partnered undergraduate engineering students with pre-service teachers to plan and deliver robotics lessons to fifth graders at a local school. This project aims to address an apparent gap between what is taught in academia and industry’s expectations of engineers to integrate perspectives from outside their field to solve modern societal problems requiring a multidisciplinary approach. Working in small teams over Zoom, participating engineering, education, and fifth grade students designed, built, and coded bio-inspired COVID companion robots. The goal for the engineering students was to build new interprofessional skills, …