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Archive for January, 2008

Sarcos® Exoskeleton: A Whole New Way To Take On Trouble

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

Many technological advances are inundating the military market. Among perhaps tougher Kevlar and new rifles, is the Sarcos^® Exoskeleton: a revolutionizing robot that complements the human body to attend to the most inhuman tasks possible. While some may imagine that lifting two hundred pounds is a struggle, this machine trivializes this very task, as a CNN video highlights the easiness and lack of human strength needed to operate the robot. With plans to become bulletproof, the exoskeleton can help a single man load a nuclear missile precisely and delicately enough to still play a game of catch- so what exactly is this military epiphany?

For the last fifteen years, as the Sarcos^® website indicates, this company has been a leader in the research and development aspects of industries relating to robotics, medical devices, and mechanical and electrical Microsystems. By targeting the focus of the company to couple two diametric perspectives of biology and engineering, the company has given birth to many inventions that add human dexterity to nonhuman elements. Much of the research conducted through the company is centered on the development of silicon-based micro-sensors and electronic servo actuation systems. Silicon-based micro-sensors primarily “measure machine operational characteristics such as rotary movement, strain, load, acceleration, position, pressure, vibration, sound, and flow”. While acknowledging a variety of characteristics relative to robotic systems on a micro scale, these sensors can take the information gathered and apply it to products in the automotive, medical and aerospace industries especially. In combination with the development of such sensors, is the creation of Human/Computer interfaces that allow “an individual to be visually and mechanically immersed within a computer-generated synthetic environment”. The interfaces are further divided into four groups that target a different aspect of a machine, or robot in this situation, including: “(1) mobility portals (MPs), (2) Sensuit command systems (SCSs), (3) graphic workstation interfaces (GWIs), and (4) dexterity masters (DMs)”. Altogether, the interfaces and microsensors allow for the robot to operate to the whim of the human as well as the human to control the robot in extreme situations throughout acute expertise of proprietary actuation, sensor, and control technologies.

Important aspects as mentioned above, are the micro-sensors and actuators used to direct the robots. One such microsensor is the Rotary Displacement Transducer, in which through “emitter and detector disks, housing elements, and a sealed input shaft, the chips interact electrostatically to measure relative position with absolute rotary resolutions”. In general most sensors produced, specifically those of Sarcos^®, address intelligence of “multiplexing, signal processing, and self-calibration as well as measurement of rotation, linear strain, and multi-axis strain” in regards to the robot.

The Human/Computer interfaces are also vital to the movement, function, and appearance of the robot that allow for its marketability and success. In general HCIs allow for the movement of the robot to be lightweight and of low resistance especially through the many degrees of freedoms providing for a myriad of joint angles. Through both wired and wireless communication between the computer and the interface, the HCIs allow for local kinematic transformations and control. Mentioned above were a few types of interfaces designed for specific purposes in regards to the robot, including MPs, SCSs, and GWIs. MPs are primarily responsible for natural movement in a synthetic environment and allow for real-time decision making in terms of speed, direction, exertion, and posture. SCS are utilized for direct and interactive real-time measurements of the operator’s body, in which certain signals conducted can control the robot in extreme situations. GWIs, lastly, are small intelligent interfaces that control through microsensors the real-time yet natural command of the many robotic movements.

As the potential consumer for such an idea would be the government and the potential purpose would be for the protection and support of the soldiers, it is grateful that the product is highly reliable yet low cost for such high performance. Since the suit can be controlled either through a remote operator wearing a SenSuit or through a computer controlled preprogrammed show, one can imagine the amount of background engineering and aesthetic design used to implement such a machine. Much of the robot is managed by advanced CAD systems called Pro/Engineer and Alpha-One which manage interfaces handling animation and analysis and allow for real-time movement unlike many robots throughout the world.

This up and coming company has been capturing the eye of the technological world since the early 90s, and with the future of the military in its hands, we have only to wait for what else is in store in the robotic community. Through the thorough research and development of the micro-sensors and interfaces, this robot is ready to stand by every soldier- helping each man and woman run faster, work harder, and yet not sweat a drop. As politics highlight the weakening of the United States military with a vast dispersal of military forces throughout the world, perhaps Sarcos^® has provided a hopeful remedy!

UW-Madison and University of Cape Town students find vision and friendship at first cross-cultural LeaderShape

Friday, January 25th, 2008

For three weeks in January, 30 University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering students explored the city and met the people of Cape Town, South Africa. And during the 2008 LeaderShape Institute, held on the University of Cape Town (UCT) campus, they learned to change the world one goal at a time.

The Wisconsin students were paired with 22 UCT students and stayed on the UCT campus. Though UW-Madison has hosted LeaderShape for more than a decade, this is the first time the program has been held in Africa, and it’s the first time American students have gone overseas to participate.

Early New Year’s Day, the UW-Madison students flew more than 20 hours to Cape Town. They spent the first few days adjusting to a time zone eight hours ahead of Wisconsin. In keeping with advice from UCT chemical engineering associate professor Duncan Fraser, the students used exercise and sunshine to beat the jet-lag. They explored downtown Cape Town, climbed Table Mountain and toured the Cape Peninsula, which is home to overly curious baboons and penguins content to merely sway in the wind.

On Day 6 (Sunday, January 6) of the trip, the UCT students arrived for LeaderShape, a six-day program focused on developing leadership qualities and identifying personal visions for changing the world. This year’s cross-cultural session was “the most intense LeaderShape I’ve seen,” says co-lead facilitator and UW-Madison alum Kristin Skarie.

The UCT students hailed from many African, Asian and European countries, as well as a variety of racial and class backgrounds. Their variety of perspectives, combined with those of the UW-Madison students, led to conversations that found a deep level of authenticity, says LeaderShape co-lead facilitator Jamie Washington. Immediately, the UW-Madison and UTC students bonded. “We have come together perfectly,” says Joey Laspe, a UW-Madison nuclear engineering student.

Abbott Laboratories and a private contributor, Gary Wendt, sponsored the trip. Students had an opportunity to meet and thank Wendt when he visited Cape Town during LeaderShape (January 6 to 12). Wendt and College of Engineering Dean Paul Peercy spoke to students about what it takes to be an effective leader. Vision and character are the two qualities central to leadership, according to Peercy. For Wendt, every vision needs to be grounded in reality and every leader needs to be persuasive enough to get people to believe in an idea.

Wendt’s own vision led him to support the trip. “We are no longer citizens of Madison or Cape Town, but citizens of the world,” he says. “Why I’m excited about being involved in this is it’s an opportunity to get engineers out of a relatively closed environment and into another environment. Being in another country is an interesting chance to learn.”

Both UW-Madison and UCT students found the LeaderShape program valuable. “I learned so much more about myself in five days than I have learned in years,” says Lesego Mosime, a construction studies student at UCT. “It was a beautiful experience for me.”

During the final week of the trip (January 13 to 18), the group had to put their teamwork and motivation skills to the test. The students worked at the Edith Stephens Wetland Park, a small preserve set in the middle of five poor townships on the outskirts of Cape Town. The pond at the park has been choked off by water hyacinth, and students spent four laborious days tossing the weed into tall piles along the banks, as well as helping with other small maintenance projects around the preserve. “The next time I see a water hyacinth, which may be in my dad’s fish pond, I’m going to throw it over the fence,” says Craig MacKenzie, a UW-Madison civil engineering student.

The hot, sweaty, mucky, nasty work—as facilitator and UW-Madison educational policy studies doctoral student JP Leary describes the project—was important to the park. With six dedicated staff members and no real funding, the park scratches out an existence in the barren Cape Flats region.

The pond is critical for the poverty-stricken communities at its borders. Winter in Cape Town means rain, and the pond keeps the water from flooding the townships. The invasive water hyacinth makes it harder for rain to run into the pond; students could envision the damage waist-high water might inflict on the tiny homes after they toured one community, Philippi, the day (January 13) before the project.

The pond offers relief from the gray, dusty landscape of the Cape Flats, as well as a home to many bird and wildlife species that risk losing their breeding spots as the hyacinth ruins the wetland ecosystem. Denis Kow Son Wong, a UCT computer and electrical engineering student, wants to continue the project by educating township kids about the value the pond has for their communities and their wildlife. “If we don’t teach them or educate them on what we did—in this case, taking out the hyacinths and maybe bringing new hope to the wildlife—inevitably the place will end up as it was before, as if we didn’t make any difference at all,” says Wong. “They’d be walking blind past this pond.”

Throughout the project, the students encouraged each other and stayed enthusiastic about working in weather that alternated between blistering hot or chilly, windy and rainy. “These very different student groups came quickly together as one and it’s very gratifying to see that spirit of collaboration make it all the way through to the end,” says Adrienne Thunder, a LeaderShape facilitator and senior advisor in the UW-Madison College of Letters and Science. “The students have been excellent representatives of both institutions.”

All too soon, January 18 arrived and the UW-Madison students packed and departed South Africa for the long flight home. However, the experience has left students from both sides of the Atlantic with strong cross-cultural relationships. “During LeaderShape, people wanted to get along, and it was easy to trust each other and talk openly,” says Ahmed Akhalwaya, a UCT computer engineering student.

Andrew Elizondo, a UW-Madison engineering mechanics and astronautics student, agrees that the Madison and UCT students got very close in a short amount of time. “I see us still cracking jokes a year from now,” he says. “It’s not really over.”

Cornell University - Bada$$ Offroading Team Builds Car from Scratch

Monday, January 14th, 2008

The Cornell Baja Racing team designs, builds and races an off-road vehicle. We participate in the SAE Midwest Regional competition, which includes events that test the maneuverability, suspension, and acceleration of the car, as well as judge its design and cost. The climax of the competition is the four hour endurance race.

Our team is made up of undergraduate students from four different colleges in the university, although most of our team members are engineers. We spend the fall semester designing the car and testing prototype improvements on previous cars. The spring semester is spent building and testing the car before the competition in June. The car is designed and built from the ground up each year, solely by students.

Joining a project team is extremely fun and rewarding. On the Baja team, even the youngest team members contribute to the design and manufacturing of our car. Fabrication is usually the first skill that new team members acquire. Many hours of practice using mills and lathes pays off, because when the car is finished you can point to a suspension upright or pedal and say, “I made that.” As members of the team gain experience through classes and sticking with the Baja team, they begin to design parts of the car as well. These design experiences often reinforce coursework, or develop skills before they come up in class.

Being part of a long-term team gives great experience in preparation for working in the industry. Learning how to design pieces of a large system is emphasized from day one. As others’ parts change, you must make changes to your work. This constant process requires patience and flexibility. Working on a large team also requires you to learn how to listen to others’ criticism of your work, and how to give useful criticism back. The creative process that goes into designing a car requires that everyone give input and that everyone listens to the given input.

Since the Baja team is about designing and building an off-road vehicle, test driving is done on trails in the woods, rock quarries and ATV test tracks. Everyone on the team gets to drive, which means that everyone on the team comes back muddy and dirty. The experience of driving a car which you helped build is unmatched by any other experience as an engineer. Especially when you can drive that car off of a really big jump.

The first part of creating the Baja car is to design it. Using CAD and other tools, the team creates a complete model of the car before ever touching a milling machine or welder. It is much faster and cheaper to experiment in a computer model than it is in physical space. Fitment of parts is done in CAD, as well as creating steering and suspension geometries. After the model is done, fabrication of the car can commence.

The frame of the Baja car is constructed from chromium molybdenum steel or “chromoly”. This is easily machined and welded steel, and also has a high tensile strength. Each frame bar is cut and mitered in order to create a triangulated frame. After each piece is fitted, the frame is welded using Tungsten Inert Gas welding (TIG). When all of the welding is complete, the frame is painted to prevent rusting.

In the Baja SAE competition, all teams are required to use the same, unmodified engine. Given this constraint, one of the simplest ways to go faster is to have as light a car as possible. The Cornell Baja team reduces the weight of the car in several ways. For metal components, designing parts that are only strong enough for the stresses they are expected to encounter saves weight. The analysis of these stresses requires Finite Element Analysis. Another way that Cornell Baja lightens the car is through the use of composites. We are increasingly using carbon fiber to replace metal sections of the car, such as the steering wheel and steering shaft. The body panels of the car are also made from composites, fiberglass for the side panels and Kevlar for the floor.

The four day competition is the most exciting time of the year. There are two days of safety inspections and static design presentations. The next day is dynamic events such as acceleration, maneuverability, suspension and traction, and hill climb. The highlight of the competition is the four hour endurance race on the last day with all 140 cars racing at once. This event is worth the most points in the competition, and is the most exciting to watch. Cars crash into each other, roll over, break down, and even catch on fire. Almost a third of the teams do not finish the endurance race, so durability of the car and smart driving are very important. One year, we had to rebuilt the drive train in the middle of the race but still managed to finish the race. In the three years we have competed, we have finished the endurance race each year.

In the three years that the Cornell Baja Racing team has competed, we have made significant strides in our performance. Each year we learn more about the technology involved with making a successful car. This year, the Cornell team is working toward its first championship.

Posted in Cornell University, Student Groups, Automotive, Mechanical Engineering | No Comments »

Hawaii Goes Green

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

One of the hottest debates raging in today’s world concerns the issue of environmental sustainability. With rising oil prices and global warming causing distress in both the economic and environmental circles, creating developments that minimize their energy usage and carbon footprint is essential.

A new initiative addressing these issues has been set in motion on the big island of Hawaii. On a 700-acre plot of volcanic rock, Cornell has teamed up with industry leaders to create a unique development that will revolutionize the world of sustainability. Through a combination of fresh thinking and cutting edge technology, the Cornell team is on the road to planning a development that will be a pioneer in the “Green” technology sector.

The Hawaiian development, Palamanui, will serve as both an example and a research platform for renewable technology and sustainable design. Cornell is in the process of developing technology and planning guidelines for this development, that includes 1,200 residential homes, a 120-room hotel, a commercial district, a section of the University of Hawaii, and a hospital.

The Cornell team, dubbed CUGreen, is a cross-disciplinary group composed of more than 20 students, faculty, and professionals who have begun to hash out the design guidelines for the development. The team includes a range of engineers, architects, and urban planners who all have a common interest in sustainable design and ‘green’ development. Through this coordination, research into renewable energy systems such as wind and solar power, and regional planning has already yielded promising results.

Thus far the team has compiled a preliminary deliverable that it will be submitting to the developers this winter. Over the course of the next semester, CUGreen will fine-tune the conceptual design to provide the investors with a specific set of guidelines, outlining the most feasible and sustainable technologies applicable to Palamanui.

Posted in Cornell University, Student Groups, Global Warming, Civil Engineering | 1 Comment »

Archive for January, 2008

Sarcos® Exoskeleton: A Whole New Way To Take On Trouble

UW-Madison and University of Cape Town students find vision and friendship at first cross-cultural LeaderShape

Cornell University - Bada$$ Offroading Team Builds Car from Scratch

Hawaii Goes Green

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