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Development of a 3D printed structural electronics force sensor

Xu, J. (author), Doubrovski, E.L. (author), Ozdemir, Mehmet (author), Geraedts, Jo M.P. (author), Song, Y. (author)

Structural electronics has garnered significant attention in the past decade. However, there remains a lack of a systematic approach in designing and manufacturing sensors that leverage both mechanical and electronic properties of materials for different applications. In this paper, we introduce a method for designing piezoresistive force...

journal article 2024

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Soft robot shape estimation with IMUs leveraging PCC kinematics for drift filtering

Stella, F. (author), Della Santina, C. (author), Hughes, Josie (author)

The control possibilities for soft robots have long been hindered by the need for reliable methods to estimate their configuration. Inertial measurement units (IMUs) can solve this challenge, but they are affected by well-known drift issues. This letter proposes a method to eliminate this limitation by leveraging the Piecewise Constant...

journal article 2024

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Shape Sensing of Flexible Robots Based on Deep Learning

Ha, Xuan Thao (author), Wu, D. (author), Ourak, Mouloud (author), Borghesan, Gianni (author), Dankelman, J. (author), Menciassi, Arianna (author), Poorten, Emmanuel Vander (author)

In this article, a deep learning method for the shape sensing of continuum robots based on multicore fiber bragg grating (FBG) fiber is introduced. The proposed method, based on an artificial neural network (ANN), differs from traditional approaches, where accurate shape reconstruction requires a tedious characterization of many...

journal article 2023

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Demonstration of Scalable Series-Connected Submodule of Modular Multilevel Converter-based Arbitrary Wave shape Generator used for High Voltage Testing from Off-the-Shelf Component

Ganeshpure, D.A. (author), Soeiro, Thiago B. (author), Gagic, Mladen (author), Ghaffarian Niasar, M. (author), Bauer, P. (author), Vaessen, P.T.M. (author)

To test high-voltage (HV) equipment with increasingly complex transients obtained from various power system studies, this article demonstrates a hardware implementation of a medium-voltage (MV) submodule (SM) to be used in a modular multilevel converter (MMC)-based HV arbitrary wave shape generator (AWG). The MV SM is scalable with its own...

journal article 2023

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Active lateral force feedback using resonant traveling waves

Cai, Z. (author), Wiertlewski, M. (author)

The sensation of touching virtual texture and shape can be provided to a touchscreen user by varying the friction force. Despite the saliency of the sensation, this modulated frictional force is purely passive and strictly opposes finger movement. Therefore, it is only possible to create forces along the direction of movement and this...

journal article 2023

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3D patellar shape is associated with radiological and clinical signs of patellofemoral osteoarthritis

Eijkenboom, J. F.A. (author), Tümer, N. (author), Schiphof, D. (author), Oei, E. H. (author), Zadpoor, A.A. (author), Bierma-Zeinstra, S. M.A. (author), van Middelkoop, M. (author)

Objective: To examine the association between 3D patellar shape and 1) isolated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based patellofemoral osteoarthritis (PFOA), 2) the morphological features of PFOA, and 3) the clinical symptoms of PFOA. Design: MRI data from 66 women with isolated MRI-based PFOA and 66 age- and BMI-matched healthy women were...

journal article 2023

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P-satI-D Shape Regulation of Soft Robots

Pustina, P. (author), Borja, Pablo (author), Della Santina, C. (author), De Luca, Alessandro (author)

Soft robots are intrinsically underactuated mechanical systems that operate under uncertainties and disturbances. In these conditions, this letter proposes two versions of PID-like control laws with a saturated integral action for the particularly challenging shape regulation task. The closed-loop system is asymptotically stabilized and...

journal article 2023

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Quantification of 3-dimensional structure and properties of flocculated natural suspended sediment

Spencer, K. L. (author), Wheatland, J. A. (author), Carr, S. J. (author), Manning, A. J. (author), Bushby, A. J. (author), Gu, C. (author), Botto, L. (author), Lawrence, T. (author)

Natural sediment flocs are fragile and highly heterogeneous aggregates of biogenic and minerogenic material typically with high porosity and low density. In aquatic environments dominated by fine, cohesive or mixed sediments they can dominate suspended sediment flux. Consequently, monitoring and modelling the behaviour, transport and...

journal article 2022

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Vision-Based Nonlinear Incremental Control for A Morphing Wing with Mechanical Imperfections

Sun, B. (author), Mkhoyan, T. (author), van Kampen, E. (author), De Breuker, R. (author), Wang, Xuerui (author)

Morphing structures have acquired much attention in the aerospace community because they enable an aircraft to actively adapt its shape during flight, leading to fewer emissions and fuel consumption. Researchers have designed, manufactured, and tested a morphing wing named SmartX-Alpha, which can actively alleviate loads while achieving the...

journal article 2022

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Semantic Scene Completion using Local Deep Implicit Functions on LiDAR Data

Rist, C.B. (author), Emmerichs, David (author), Enzweiler, Markus (author), Gavrila, D. (author)

Semantic scene completion is the task of jointly estimating 3D geometry and semantics of objects and surfaces within a given extent. This is a particularly challenging task on real-world data that is sparse and occluded. We propose a scene segmentation network based on local Deep Implicit Functions as a novel learning-based method for scene...

journal article 2022

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Contour Moments Based Manipulation of Composite Rigid-Deformable Objects With Finite Time Model Estimation and Shape/Position Control

Qi, Jiaming (author), Ma, Guangfu (author), Zhu, J. (author), Zhou, Peng (author), Lyu, Yueyong (author), Zhang, Haibo (author), Navarro-Alarcon, David (author)

The robotic manipulation of composite rigid-deformable objects (i.e., those with mixed nonhomogeneous stiffness properties) is a challenging problem with clear practical applications that, despite the recent progress in the field, it has not been sufficiently studied in the literature. To deal with this issue, in this article, we propose a...

journal article 2022

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On-Line Black-Box Aerodynamic Performance Optimization for a Morphing Wing With Distributed Sensing and Control

Mkhoyan, T. (author), Ruland, O.L. (author), De Breuker, R. (author), Wang, Xuerui (author)

Inspired by nature, smart morphing technologies enable the aircraft of tomorrow to sense their environment and adapt the shape of their wings in flight to minimize fuel consumption and emissions. A primary challenge on the road to this feature is how to use the knowledge gathered from sensory data to establish an optimal shape adaptively and...

journal article 2022

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Accurate Scene Text Detection via Scale-Aware Data Augmentation and Shape Similarity Constraint

Dai, Pengwen (author), Li, Y. (author), Zhang, Hua (author), Li, Jingzhi (author), Cao, Xiaochun (author)

Scene text detection has attracted increasing concerns with the rapid development of deep neural networks in recent years. However, existing scene text detectors may overfit on the public datasets due to the limited training data, or generate inaccurate localization for arbitrary-shape scene texts. This paper presents an arbitrary-shape scene...

journal article 2021

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Esophageal Tumor Segmentation in CT Images using a Dilated Dense Attention Unet (DDAUnet)

Yousefi, Sahar (author), Sokooti, Hessam (author), Elmahdy, Mohamed S. (author), Lips, Irene M. (author), Shalmani, Mohammad T.Manzuri (author), Zinkstok, Roel T. (author), Dankers, Frank J.W.M. (author), Staring, M. (author)

Manual or automatic delineation of the esophageal tumor in CT images is known to be very challenging. This is due to the low contrast between the tumor and adjacent tissues, the anatomical variation of the esophagus, as well as the occasional presence of foreign bodies (e.g. feeding tubes). Physicians therefore usually exploit additional...

journal article 2021

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LaSeSOM: A Latent and Semantic Representation Framework for Soft Object Manipulation

Zhou, Peng (author), Zhu, J. (author), Huo, Shengzeng (author), Navarro-Alarcon, David (author)

Soft object manipulation has recently gained popularity within the robotics community due to its potential applications in many economically important areas. Although great progress has been recently achieved in these types of tasks, most state-of-the-art methods are case-specific; They can only be used to perform a single deformation task (e...

journal article 2021

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Effects of light map orientation and shape on the visual perception of canonical materials

Zhang, F. (author), de Ridder, H. (author), Barla, Pascal (author), Pont, S.C. (author)

We previously presented a systematic optics-based canonical approach to test material-lighting interactions in their full natural ecology, combining canonical material and lighting modes. Analyzing the power of the spherical harmonics components of the lighting allowed us to predict the lighting effects on material perception for generic...

journal article 2020

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Adaptive joints with variable stiffness: Strategically arranged materials with transduction properties

Bier, H.H. (author), Wang, Qinyu (author), Teuffel, Patrick (author), Senatore, Gennaro (author)

The environment around buildings keeps changing, while the static design solutions of buildings cannot perform well during the whole service life. In order to improve structural performances including strength (i.e. avoid collapse) and serviceability, adaptive structures are likely to establish as one of future trends in both research and...

journal article 2019

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Effects of Target Signal Shape and System Dynamics on Feedforward in Manual Control

Drop, F.M. (author), Pool, D.M. (author), van Paassen, M.M. (author), Mulder, Max (author), Bulthoff, Heinrich H. (author)

The human controller (HC) in manual control of a dynamical system often follows a visible and predictable reference path (target). The HC can adopt a control strategy combining closed-loop feedback and an open-loop feedforward response. The effects of the target signal waveform shape and the system dynamics on the human feedforward dynamics...

journal article 2018

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Voxel-Based Extraction and Classification of 3-D Pole-Like Objects From Mobile LiDAR Point Cloud Data

Kang, Z. (author), Yang, Juntao (author), Zhong, Ruofei (author), Wu, Yongxing (author), Shi, Zhenwei (author), Lindenbergh, R.C. (author)

The digital mapping of road environment is an important task for road infrastructure inventory and urban planning. Automatic extraction and classification of pole-like objects can remarkably reduce mapping cost and enhance work efficiency. Therefore, this paper proposes a voxel-based method that automatically extracts and classifies three...

journal article 2018

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New clustering techniques based on current peak value, charge and energy calculations for separation of partial discharge sources

Mor, A. R. (author), Castro Heredia, L.C. (author), Muñoz, F. A. (author)

Clustering techniques are of main interest for separation of partial discharge (PD) sources. The separation is achieved if it is possible to extract from the PD pulses specific information related to the source. In this sense, this paper explores the capability of fundamental quantities derived from PD current pulses such as the peak amplitude...

journal article 2017