Task-specific object grasps using primitive shapes and symbolic reasoning

In household and retail store environments, humans efficiently identify grasp regions of an object to perform everyday tasks. To enable robots to understand the requirements of a task and the properties of an object, a novel grasp framework, called the Shape Primitive and Reasoning Grasping Engine (SPaRGE), is proposed in this thesis. SPaRGE...

Design optimization for a kinematic coupling for use in vacuum with minimum particle generation

In the semiconductor industry, integrated circuits with nanometre scale structures are manufactured on silicon wafers. Particle contamination on the topside of the wafer can result in the defectivity of the entire die. In the ever-increasing efforts to create smaller structures onto a wafer particle contamination becomes more restrictive to...