High-precision manipulation is very important for a variety of tasks in manufacturing. In general, high-precision manipulation is usually achieved by the guidance of high-precision sensors; however, ...sensorless methods, for some special cases, are more reliable and effective. There are many important works in this aspect 1-3. The concept of "attractive region in environment" (ARIE), which was proposed in our previous works 4-6, provides a prospective approach for low-precision systems to achieve high-precision manipulation. It has been used in various industrial applications, such as robotic assembly 7, grasping 8, and localization 9. ARIE is a region from any point of which the uncertainty of the system can be eliminated by a state-independent input. The utilization of attractive region can be easily understood by the case of a bean in a bowl. For a bean in a bowl, no matter where the initial position of the bean is, it will move to and finally stay at the bottom of the bowl under gravity. Thus, the uncertainty of the bean is eliminated by gravity without any sensor feedback. Inspired by the above case, the general concept of ARIE is proposed and is applied to industry. In this paper, we review the application of ARIE and give its formal definition. Furthermore, we establish conditions for the existence of ARIE in the generalized configuration space, which is complex and nonideal. The relationship between the high-dimensional attractive region and the low-dimensional one is also discussed, which is helpful to make feasible and reliable manipulation strategies in the low-dimensional configuration space. The main contribution of this paper is the generalization of the concept of ARIE, which provides a theoretical foundation for applications including the high-precision manipulation with low-precision system. The experimental simulations on different kinds of complex manipulations show the effectiveness of the proposed method for industrial applications.
Abstract
Continuous monitoring of arterial blood pressure (BP) outside of a clinical setting is crucial for preventing and diagnosing hypertension related diseases. However, current continuous BP ...monitoring instruments suffer from either bulky systems or poor user-device interfacial performance, hampering their applications in continuous BP monitoring. Here, we report a thin, soft, miniaturized system (TSMS) that combines a conformal piezoelectric sensor array, an active pressure adaptation unit, a signal processing module, and an advanced machine learning method, to allow real wearable, continuous wireless monitoring of ambulatory artery BP. By optimizing the materials selection, control/sampling strategy, and system integration, the TSMS exhibits improved interfacial performance while maintaining Grade A level measurement accuracy. Initial trials on 87 volunteers and clinical tracking of two hypertension individuals prove the capability of the TSMS as a reliable BP measurement product, and its feasibility and practical usability in precise BP control and personalized diagnosis schemes development.
Recent advances in virtual reality (VR) technologies accelerate the creation of a flawless 3D virtual world to provide frontier social platform for human. Equally important to traditional visual, ...auditory and tactile sensations, olfaction exerts both physiological and psychological influences on humans. Here, we report a concept of skin-interfaced olfactory feedback systems with wirelessly, programmable capabilities based on arrays of flexible and miniaturized odor generators (OGs) for olfactory VR applications. By optimizing the materials selection, design layout, and power management, the OGs exhibit outstanding device performance in various aspects, from response rate, to odor concentration control, to long-term continuous operation, to high mechanical/electrical stability and to low power consumption. Representative demonstrations in 4D movie watching, smell message delivery, medical treatment, human emotion control and VR/AR based online teaching prove the great potential of the soft olfaction interface in various practical applications, including entertainment, education, human machine interfaces and so on.
Olfaction feedback systems could be utilized to stimulate human emotion, increase alertness, provide clinical therapy, and establish immersive virtual environments. Currently, the reported olfaction ...feedback technologies still face a host of formidable challenges, including human perceivable delay in odor manipulation, unwieldy dimensions, and limited number of odor supplies. Herein, we report a general strategy to solve these problems, which associates with a wearable, high-performance olfactory interface based on miniaturized odor generators (OGs) with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. The OGs serve as the core technology of the intelligent olfactory interface, which exhibit milestone advances in millisecond-level response time, milliwatt-scale power consumption, and the miniaturized size. Empowered by robust AI algorithms, the olfactory interface shows its great potentials in latency-free mixed reality (MR) and fast olfaction enhancement, thereby establishing a bridge between electronics and users for broad applications ranging from entertainment, to education, to medical treatment, and to human machine interfaces.
Abstract
The rapid diagnosis of respiratory virus infection through breath and blow remains challenging. Here we develop a wireless, battery-free, multifunctional pathogenic infection diagnosis ...system (PIDS) for diagnosing SARS-CoV-2 infection and symptom severity by blow and breath within 110 s and 350 s, respectively. The accuracies reach to 100% and 92% for evaluating the infection and symptom severity of 42 participants, respectively. PIDS realizes simultaneous gaseous sample collection, biomarker identification, abnormal physical signs recording and machine learning analysis. We transform PIDS into other miniaturized wearable or portable electronic platforms that may widen the diagnostic modes at home, outdoors and public places. Collectively, we demonstrate a general-purpose technology for rapidly diagnosing respiratory pathogenic infection by breath and blow, alleviating the technical bottleneck of saliva and nasopharyngeal secretions. PIDS may serve as a complementary diagnostic tool for other point-of-care techniques and guide the symptomatic treatment of viral infections.
Wearable sweat sensors are gaining significant attention due to their unparalleled potential for noninvasive health monitoring. Sweat, as a kind of body fluid, contains informative physiological ...indicators that are related to personalized health status. Advances in wearable sweat sampling and routing technologies, flexible, and stretchable materials, and wireless digital technologies have led to the development of integrated sweat sensors that are comfortable, flexible, light, and intelligent. Herein, we report a flexible and integrated wearable device via incorporating a microfluidic system and a sensing chip with skin-integrated electronic format toward in-situ monitoring of uric acid (UA) in sweat that associates with gout, cardiovascular, and renal diseases. The microfluidic system validly realizes the real-time capture perspiration from human skin. The obtained detection range is 5-200 μM and the detection limit is 1.79 μM, which offers an importance diagnostic method for clinical relevant lab test. The soft and flexible features of the constructed device allows it to be mounted onto nearly anywhere on the body. We tested the sweat UA in diverse subjects and various body locations during exercise, and similar trends were also observed by using a commercial UA assay kit.
Abstract
Thin and flexible skin electronics have attracted great attention for their applications in monitoring human health status continuously and intelligently. However, the versatility of these ...electronics is impeded by the performance of power supply and sensor modules, and their portability is also restricted by the need for external devices to handle data processing and analysis. Here, this work presents a wearable electronics system with health status sensing and visualization system (HSSVS), where the power is supplied by sweat‐activated batteries (SABs). The reported system enables the detection of crucial human physiological information, such as the Na
+
concentration and the pH level in sweat, as well as skin temperature. The electrodes of the sensors and the batteries are fabricated by the laser ablation method. The laser‐induced polyimide (PI)/gelatin‐based graphene (LIGA) based sensors show a wide linear range for the sensing markers with high sensitivity, and high selectivity. The SABs based on laser‐induced PI/gelatin based graphene anchored with manganese dioxide (LIGA@MnO
2
) can support the entire sensing and visualization system with ultrathin, excellent biocompatibility, and mechanical properties. Additionally, incorporating a visualization design such as color changes in LEDs enables users to easily identify variations in health status. This integrated system demonstrates promising potential in smart sensing devices for health management.
The sense of touch is essential for locating buried objects when vision-based approaches are limited. We present an approach for tactile perception when sensorized robot fingertips are used to ...directly interact with granular media particles in teleoperated systems. We evaluate the effects of linear and nonlinear classifier model architectures and three tactile sensor modalities (vibration, internal fluid pressure, fingerpad deformation) on the accuracy of estimates of fingertip contact state. We propose an architecture called the Sparse-Fusion Recurrent Neural Network (SF-RNN) in which sparse features are autonomously extracted prior to fusing multimodal tactile data in a fully connected RNN input layer. The multimodal SF-RNN model achieved 98.7% test accuracy and was robust to modest variations in granular media type and particle size, fingertip orientation, fingertip speed, and object location. Fingerpad deformation was the most informative modality for haptic exploration within granular media while vibration and internal fluid pressure provided additional information with appropriate signal processing. We introduce a real-time visualization of tactile percepts for remote exploration by constructing a belief map that combines probabilistic contact state estimates and fingertip location. The belief map visualizes the probability of an object being buried in the search region and could be used for planning.
Robots are expected to operate autonomously in unstructured, real-world environments. For effective physical interaction with the world, robots must build and refine their understanding of the ...environment through sensory feedback. However, tactile feedback has been used primarily in open-air environments and not within granular materials. When robots operate within opaque granular materials, tactile and proprioceptive feedback can be more informative than visual feedback. Our long-term objective is to leverage tactile sensors to develop efficient algorithms that enable robots to infer environmental conditions and to plan exploratory movements that reduce uncertainty in their models of the world. Motivated by the need to keep humans out of harm’s way in search and rescue or other field environments, we address the challenge of using tactile feedback to locate objects buried in granular materials.In study #1, we designed a tactile perception pipeline for sensorized robot fingertips that directly interact with granular materials in teleoperated systems. We proposed an architecture called the Sparse-Fusion Recurrent Neural Network (SF-RNN) to detect contact with an object buried within granular materials. We leveraged multimodal tactile sensor data in order to classify contact states within five different granular materials. We also constructed a belief map that combines probabilistic contact state estimates and fingertip location.In study #2, we developed a framework for tactile perception, mapping, and haptic exploration for the autonomous localization of objects buried in granular materials. The haptic exploration task was performed within densely packed sand mixtures using sensor models that account for granular material characteristics and aid in the interpretation of interaction forces between the robot and its environment. The haptic exploration strategy was designed to efficiently locate and refine the outline of a buried object while simultaneously minimizing potentially damaging physical interactions with the object. Continuous occupancy maps were generated that fused local, sparse tactile information into global maps.In summary, we developed tactile-based frameworks for perception, planning, and mapping for the challenging task of localizing objects buried within granular materials. Our work can serve as a foundation for more complex, autonomous robotic behaviors such as the excavation and bimanual retrieval of fragile, buried objects.
Wearable electronics with great breathability enable a comfortable wearing experience and facilitate continuous biosignal monitoring over extended periods
. However, current research on permeable ...electronics is predominantly at the stage of electrode and substrate development, which is far behind practical applications with comprehensive integration with diverse electronic components (for example, circuitry, electronics, encapsulation)
. Achieving permeability and multifunctionality in a singular, integrated wearable electronic system remains a formidable challenge. Here we present a general strategy for integrated moisture-permeable wearable electronics based on three-dimensional liquid diode (3D LD) configurations. By constructing spatially heterogeneous wettability, the 3D LD unidirectionally self-pumps the sweat from the skin to the outlet at a maximum flow rate of 11.6 ml cm
min
, 4,000 times greater than the physiological sweat rate during exercise, presenting exceptional skin-friendliness, user comfort and stable signal-reading behaviour even under sweating conditions. A detachable design incorporating a replaceable vapour/sweat-discharging substrate enables the reuse of soft circuitry/electronics, increasing its sustainability and cost-effectiveness. We demonstrated this fundamental technology in both advanced skin-integrated electronics and textile-integrated electronics, highlighting its potential for scalable, user-friendly wearable devices.
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