Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Development Of A Soft Robotic Approach For An Intra-Abdominal Wireless Laparoscopic Camera, Hui Liu

Doctoral Dissertations

In Single-Incision Laparoscopic Surgery (SILS), the Magnetic Anchoring and Guidance System (MAGS) arises as a promising technique to provide larger workspaces and field of vision for the laparoscopes, relief space for other instruments, and require fewer incisions. Inspired by MAGS, many concept designs related to fully insertable magnetically driven laparoscopes are developed and tested on the transabdominal operation. However, ignoring the tissue interaction and insertion procedure, most of the designs adopt rigid structures, which not only damage the patients' tissue with excess stress concentration and sliding motion but also require complicated operation for the insertion. Meanwhile, lacking state tracking of …

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. …

Utility Scale Building Energy Modeling And Climate Impacts, Brett C. Bass

Doctoral Dissertations

Energy consumption is steadily increasing year over year in the United States (US). Climate change and anthropogenically forced shifts in weather have a significant impact on energy use as well as the resilience of the built environment and the electric grid. With buildings accounting for about 40% of total energy use in the US, building energy modeling (BEM) at a large scale is critical. This work advances that effort in a number of ways. First, current BEM approaches, their ability to scale to large geographical areas, and global climate models are reviewed. Next, a methodology for large-scale BEM is illustrated, …

Dynamic In Vivo Skeletal Feature Tracking Via Fluoroscopy Using A Human Gait Model, William Patrick Anderson

Doctoral Dissertations

The Tracking Fluoroscope System II, a mobile robotic fluoroscopy platform, developed and built at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, presently employs a pattern matching algorithm in order to identify and track a marker placed upon a subject’s knee joint of interest. The purpose of this research is to generate a new tracking algorithm based around the human gait cycle for prediction and improving the overall accuracy of joint tracking.

This research centers around processing the acquired x-ray images of the desired knee joint obtained during standard clinical operation in order to identify and track directly through the acquired image. Due …

Dynamic Simulation And Neuromuscular Control Of Movement: Applications For Predictive Simulations Of Balance Recovery, Misagh Mansouri Boroujeni

Doctoral Dissertations

Balance is among the most challenging tasks for patients with movement disorders. Study and treatment of these disorders could greatly benefit from combined software tools that offer better insights into neuromuscular biomechanics, and predictive capabilities for optimal surgical and rehabilitation treatment planning. A platform was created to combine musculoskeletal modeling, closed-loop forward dynamic simulation, optimization techniques, and neuromuscular control system design. Spinal (stretch-reflex) and supraspinal (operational space task-based) controllers were developed to test simulation-based hypotheses related to balance recovery and movement control. A corrective procedure (rectus femoris transfer surgery) was targeted for children experiencing stiff-knee gait and how this procedure …

Modeling, Analysis, And Control Of A Mobile Robot For In Vivo Fluoroscopy Of Human Joints During Natural Movements, Matthew A. Young

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, the modeling, analysis and control of a multi-degree of freedom (mdof) robotic fluoroscope was investigated. A prototype robotic fluoroscope exists, and consists of a 3 dof mobile platform with two 2 dof Cartesian manipulators mounted symmetrically on opposite sides of the platform. One Cartesian manipulator positions the x-ray generator and the other Cartesian manipulator positions the x-ray imaging device. The robotic fluoroscope is used to x-ray skeletal joints of interest of human subjects performing natural movement activities. In order to collect the data, the Cartesian manipulators must keep the x-ray generation and imaging devices accurately aligned while …

Vision-Based Robot Control In The Context Of Human-Machine Interactions, Andrzej Nycz

Doctoral Dissertations

This research has explored motion control based on visual servoing – in the context of complex human-machine interactions and operations in realistic environments. Two classes of intelligent robotic systems were studied in this context: operator assistance with a high dexterity telerobotic manipulator performing remote tooling-centric tasks, and a bio-robot for X-ray imaging of lower extremity human skeletal joints during natural walking. The combination of human-machine interactions and practical application scenarios has led to the following fundamental contributions: 1) exploration and evaluation of a new concept of acquiring fluoroscope images of musculoskeletal features of interest during natural human motion, 2) creation …