This paper reports mechanical tasting and modeling results for the McKibben artificial muscle pneumatic actuator. This device, first developed in the 1950’s, contains an expanding tube surrounded by braided cords. We report static and dynamic length-tension testing results and derive a linearized model of these properties for three different models. The results are brieffy compared with human m...

The payment in paid crowdsourcing markets like Amazon Mechanical Turk is very low, and still collected demographic data shows that the participants are a very diverse group including highly skilled full time workers. Many existing studies on their motivation are rudimental and not grounded on established motivation theory. Therefore, we adapt different models from classic motivation theory, wor...

BACKGROUND Prolonged immobilization may harm intensive care unit (ICU) patients, and early mobilization has been proposed to counteract that process. We describe our experience in early rehabilitation of ICU patients, and its effects on physiologic outcomes. METHODS We included all patients who stayed in our 14-bed medical ICU for > or = 7 days and received invasive mechanical ventilation for...

Mechanical maintenance of F-16 engines is carried out as a team effort involving 3 to 4 skilled engine technicians. This paper presents the development of a mechanical maintenance simulator for their training. This simulator aims to enable technician training to be enhanced with cooperation and context prior to the training phase with actual physical engines. We describe the requirements that w...

By means of multiscale molecular simulations, we show that telechelic-star polymers are a simple, robust, and tunable system, which hierarchically self-assembles into soft-patchy particles and mechanically stabilizes selected, open crystalline structures. The self-aggregating patchy behavior can be fully controlled by the number of arms per star and by the fraction of attractive monomeric units...

closed kinematic chains and 1 2 ) as a force constrainad mechanical system working on the samo object simultaneously. based on a feedback linearization and simultaneous output docoupling technique. Applying a nonli ear faodback and a nonlinear coordinate transformation, the complicated model of the multiple robot arms in either formulation is converted into a linear and output decoupled system....

Regardless the growing popularity of Virtual Reality, the design of Virtual Environments remains a complex task that requires skilled people. To overcome this, we have developed the VR-WISE approach that allows specifying a Virtual Environment at a conceptual level, free from any implementation details, allowing stakeholders not familiar with VR-technology to participate in the design of a VR a...