Sharif Digital Repository

This paper presents a kinematics and workspace analysis of cable-suspended manipulators with elastic cable. The mechanics of extensible cable with a deflection to its selfweight are studied. The problem of evaluating the workspace is approached by using a modified formulation for a deformable cable. The proposed algorithm for testing whether a given configuration lies within the reachable workspace is applied. Starting with a general statement of the kinetic equations of the elastic cable and incorporate cable flexibility into workspace generation. This algorithm is verified through simulation results of various cable-suspended robots. © 2008 IEEE  

The present work studied bioactive coatings on the surface of ceramic biomaterials. Zirconia toughened alumina (ZTA) composites containing 15 mol.-%. Partially stabilised zirconia was prepared after 1 h sintering at 1550°C. Apatite layers were then coated onto the surfaces of composites by the biomimetic method using 1·5-2 multiply concentrations of simulated body fluid (SBF). Before treatment in SBFs, a sodium silicate layer was employed as nucleating agent to induce the formation of a calcium phosphate layer. The effect of immersion time on the morphology of the precipitate was monitored with a scanning electron microscope. X dot maps revealed that there is a relationship between... 

Due to the highly dynamic nature of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Software-Defined Network (SDN) is a promising technology to ease network management by providing a logically centralized control plane. It is a common approach to employ multiple SDN controllers to form a physically distributed SDN to achieve better fault tolerance, boost scalability, and enhance performance. Despite physical distribution, since the notion behind SDN is to logically centralize network management, it is essential to provide a consistent view of the network's state for all controllers. Deploying multiple controllers result in higher synchronization and deployment cost. Since network performance and... 

This study attempts to reach a broad understanding of the stability properties of nonlinear time-periodic flapping wing structures. Two bio-system models, Hummingbird (6DOF) and Hawkmoth (3DOF) are developed for this purpose. Initial analysis on the Hummingbird model, which is based on the Floquet theory, kinetic energy integration, and phase portrait technique, indicates lack of stability in hover flight. Kinetic energy integration is carried out on the extended model of the Hawkmoth to find the domain of attraction and increase the level of stability by varying the design parameters. Here, the hinge location of the wing, flapping amplitude, flapping frequency, and mean angle of attack are... 

Mechanical alloying and sintering were used to fabricate nanostructured Ti6Al4V scaffolds of highly controllable pore geometry and fully interconnected porous network. Elemental powders were milled for different periods of time (10, 20, 30, 40 and 60 h), mixed with 40-60 vol.-% of 200-400 μm cuboidal NaCl, compacted at 500-600 MPa and sintered according to single or double stage heat treatment regimes at 790 and 950°C under vacuum. After sintering, the samples were soaked in distilled water to washout the NaCl. Foamy microstructures were obtained showing well shaped biopores and fragmentary embedded micropores. The shape of initial NaCl was copied into the biopores which had highly... 

Highly selective epoxidation (> 95%) of unfunctionalized alkenes was performed by tetrabutylammonium periodate in the presence of six different phenyl substituted manganese(III) meso-tetraphenylporphyrins [Mn(Por)] and imidazole in CH2Cl2. Electron-withdrawing and bulky substituents on the phenyl groups lowered the catalytic activities of the corresponding Mn(Por). Less bulky alkenes with electron -rich double bonds showed greater reactivity in the epoxidation. Co-catalytic activities of four different classes of axial nitrogen donors are compared in the presence of various Mn(Por). In general no direct correlation was found between co-catalytic activities and the pKa values of the nitrogen... 

This study aimed to evaluate the properties of nanocomposite hydrogel (NCH) based on poly (vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP), poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG), and Barium titanate (BTNPs). Gamma radiation at various doses (25 kGy, 35 kGy) was employed to prepare cross-linked hydrogel. The effect of PVP concentration, PVP/PEG ratio, and BTNPs content, and irradiation dosage on gel content and swelling ratio of synthesized hydrogels were determined. The Flory-Rehner equation was employed to calculate the network parameters. The FTIR results indicate that the chemical structure was deformed through crosslinking PVP macromolecule radicals. The XRD spectra indicated the cubic phase of BTNPs particles and the... 

Ground granulated blast furnace slag is a sustainable material and supplementary for cement in the concrete industry. Different behavioral aspects must be assessed to achieve reliable sustainable materials, including post-fire mechanical properties. One robust tool is the machine learning approach to train prediction models. This study proposes a novel machine learning algorithm, hybrid support vector regression and dolphin echolocation algorithm (SVR-DE), to predict the post-fire compressive strength ratio of slag-based concrete. In this regard, SVR hyper-parameters were tuned by the DE optimization algorithm. Four kernel functions were implemented in SVR formulation: linear, sigmoid,... 

In this paper, a new fuzzy coordination method based on Interaction Prediction Principle (IPP) is presented for the optimal control of robot manipulators. For this purpose, the robot manipulator is considered as a two-level large-scale system where in the first level, the overall system is decomposed into several subsystems. Each subsystem can include one or more consecutive links and joints. In the second level, a fuzzy interaction prediction system is introduced for coordination of the overall system where a critic vector is also used for evaluation of its performance. The simulation results of using the proposed novel approach ,for optimal control of robot manipulators, show its... 

According to the fact that humans and animals show marvelous abilities in walking on irregular terrain, there is a strong need for adaptive algorithms in walking of biped robots to behave like them. Since the stance leg can easily rise from the ground and it can easily rotate about the toe or the heel, the problem of controlling the biped robots is difficult. In this paper, according to the adaptive locomotion patterns of animals, coordination and control of body links have been done with Central Pattern Generator (CPG) in spinal cord and feedback network from musculoskeletal system. A one layer feedforward neural network that its inputs are the scaled joint variables and the touch sensors... 

In certain types of biomimetic surgery systems, micro robots inspired by Paramecium are designed to swim in a capillary tube for gaining access to internal organs with minimal invasion. Gaining insight into the mechanics of Paramecium swimming in a capillary tube is vital for optimizing the design of such systems. There are two approaches to modeling the physics of micro swimming. In the envelope approach, which is widely accepted by researchers, Paramecium is approximated as a sphere, self-propelled by tangential and normal surface distortions. However, not only is this approach incapable of considering the specific geometry of Paramecium, but it also neglects short range hydrodynamic... 

To have a complete model of a thunniform Fish-Robot, models of both body and tail are required. The dynamic model of the body is developed according to the parameters of a thunniform Fish-Robot built in MIT University, while, as the main part of this paper, the dynamic model of the tail is developed using fuzzy logic. Using experimental data and table look-up scheme, a fuzzy black box is introduced that gives the value of thrust force generated for any value of the Fish-Robot's input parameters: frequency of tail oscillation, amplitude of tail oscillation and speed of the Fish-Robot. In the second part, a trajectory fuzzy controller is designed for the Fish-Robot. The output of trajectory... 

To have a complete model of a thunniform Fish-Robot, models of both body and tail are required. The dynamic model of the body is developed according to the parameters of a thunniform Fish-Robot built in MIT University, while, as the main part of this paper, the dynamic model of the tail is developed using fuzzy logic. Using experimental data and table look-up scheme, a fuzzy black box is introduced that gives the value of thrust force generated for any value of the Fish-Robot's input parameters: frequency of tail oscillation, amplitude of tail oscillation and speed of the Fish-Robot. In the second part, a trajectory fuzzy controller is designed for the Fish-Robot. The output of trajectory... 

Development of predictive multi-organ models before implementing costly clinical trials is central for screening the toxicity, efficacy, and side effects of new therapeutic agents. Despite significant efforts that have been recently made to develop biomimetic in vitro tissue models, the clinical application of such platforms is still far from reality. Recent advances in physiologically-based pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic (PBPK-PD) modeling, micro- and nanotechnology, and in silico modeling have enabled single- and multi-organ platforms for investigation of new chemical agents and tissue-tissue interactions. This review provides an overview of the principles of designing... 

For a successful repair and reconstruction of bladder tissue, fabrication of scaffolds with proper biochemical and biomechanical characteristics is necessary. Decellularized bladder tissue has been proposed in previous studies as a gold standard material for scaffold fabrication. However, weak mechanical properties of such a load-bearing tissue has remained a challenge. Incorporation of both biological and synthetic materials has been known as an effective strategy for improving mechanical and biological properties of the scaffolds. In the present work, a simple process was developed to fabricate hybrid hydrogel scaffolds with a biomimetic architecture from the natural urinary bladder... 

Gimbal transmissions are non-linear direct transmissions and can be used in robotic arms replacing the traditional revolute joints. To investigate manipulability of robotic manipulators, the classical criterion of Manipulability Ellipsoid has been formulated. Thus by keeping a constant norm for robot joint torques vector, the effects of replacing some traditional revolute joints in robotic arms with Gimbal transmissions, have been analyzed. The results show that the magnitude of the maximum force applicable when employing Gimbal transmission can be considerably larger. Also, the joint angles in which this maximum occurs, can be adjusted, thanks to the behavior of Gimbal transmission. Two... 

Hydroxyapatite (HA) is the most substantial mineral constituent of a bone which has been extensively used in medicine as implantable materials, owing to its good biocompatibility, bioactivity high osteoconductive, and/or osteoinductive properties. Nevertheless, its mechanical property is not utmost appropriate for a bone substitution. Therefore, a composite consist of HA and a biodegradable polymer is usually prepared to generate an apt bone scaffold. In the present work polycaprolactone (PCL), a newly remarkable biocompatible and biodegradable polymer, was employed as a matrix and hydroxyapatite nanoparticles were used as a reinforcement element of the composite. HA/PCL nanocomposites were... 

Integrating humans and robotics technology into one system offers multiple opportunities for creating assistive technologies that can be employed in biomechanical, industrial, and aerospace applications. The present study deals with employing the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) approach in rule base derivation for powered exoskeleton intelligent control to assist paraplegic patient mobility. By employing the hybrid learning algorithm, optimal distributed membership functions to describe the mapping relation in the input and output parameters of the gait cycle were derived. As the proposed control strategy was unaffected by changing human dynamics, the reliability and robustness... 

ILS-based reservoir is a bio-inspired computational model consisting of spiking neurons which has been designed to process spatiotemporal patterns appropriately. In ILS-based reservoir, the neurons are located in an ionic environment and the connections are provided by ionic density. By using ionic diffusion as a processing operation, this model is able to consider the effects of both the preceding and current stimuli properly. Since character recognition is an important task in various applications, this paper focuses on the classification of handwritten digits using ILS-based reservoir. For this purpose, a neuromorphic handwritten digit dataset called N-MNIST dataset is used as a... 

The catalytic activity of highvalent iron-oxo active species of heme enzymes is known to be dependent on the nature of the axial ligand trans to the iron-oxo group. In a similar fashion, experimental studies on iron-oxo porphyrin biomimetic systems have shown a significant axial ligand effect on ethylbenzene hydroxylation, with an axial acetonitrile ligand leading to phenyl hydroxylation products and an axial chloride anion giving predominantly benzyl hydroxylation products. To elucidate the fundamental factors that distinguish this regioselectivity reversal in iron-oxo porphyrin catalysis, we have performed a series of density functional theory calculations on the hydroxylation of...