Sharif Digital Repository

Exoskeleton is a wearable active device used to augment human power in upper or lower extremities. The integration of robotic devices and conventional physiotherapy is becoming more and more acceptable worldwide. The main scope of this thesis is to design and develop a prototype of a light, low-cost and wearable robotic exoskeleton to rehabilitate the upper extremity in stroke patients at home. For this purpose mechanism of a wearable exoskeleton will be proposed compatible with upper extremity degrees of freedoms with minimum number of actuators which is constructed inexpensively to eliminate the demand of expensive and professional therapists. The conceptual design of such a system should... 

It is so essential to study a safe dynamics of agricultural mechanical equipment during duty stroke, plus getting a rich information about the nature of the soil under processing and in many cases there are associated simultaneous problems, so the main aim of this study is to create a safe working conditions for such specific equipment to extend their life time span as possible as it could. This study will predict an un-usual working circumstances for agricultural tools including plough of course depending on some automated technologies with fast response supported by smooth working conditions. Simply, the proposed Investigative system consists of a linear potentiometric element with... 

Elevated water tanks are one of the most critical elements in civilized society to provide safe servicing resources of drinking water after natural and human-made disasters. Dynamic analysis plays a vital role in investigating structural behavior of the elevated storage system subjected to the earthquake-induced vibration. The main scope of this paper is to address the structural stability analysis of the Kish Island’s elevated reinforced concrete water tank employing finite element method. A complete solid model of the structure with detailed design was constructed, and finite element analysis was carried out utilizing ABAQUS software. To investigate the dynamic behavior of the structure, a... 

In recent years, industrial robots have been greatly used as orienting devices in industry, especially in the automotive, shipbuilding and aerospace manufacturing industries. Industrial robots are gradually finding their niche in manufacturing, replacing less universal and more expensive CNC-machines. Application area of robots is constantly growing; they begin to be used for the assembly, pick-and-place operations, machining operations and etc. The use of robots for machining operations is growing because of their flexibility to perform a broad spectrum of tasks at a lower cost when compared with machine tools. Recently, parallel robots have attracted more and more researchers’ attention in... 

In this research a robotic fish was designed and fabricated. For this propose different types of manufactured robotic fish were investigated and this model was developed and made with a one-piece flexible tail with an actuator that creates lateral movement through cable strings attached to the tail. Proposed mechanism has a simple, low cost structure that facilitates the control of the robotic fish movement. To control this robotic fish, a four-channel radio controller with 40 kHz frequency, was used. Swimming mode of this robotic fish is categorized in Subcarangiform swimming mode which is faster and has better maneuverability compared to its counterparts. It should be noted that the... 

A heat exchanger is a piece of equipment is built for efficient heat transfer from one medium to another. They are widely used in air conditioning, chemical plants and petrochemical plants, so studying the different failures and problems of them is important.
One of the common problems is fracturing of the tubes. This will allow the hot water to enters them and then hit the refractory of the tubesheet. This coating slowly washing away and that will lead to direct contact between the hot fluid and the tubesheet. Tubesheet is not designed for such a hot thermal load so cracks will initiate on it due to this new situation. They will shut the fractured tube by shut it down and welding a... 

In this thesis, a dynamic model of the biomimetic robotic fish with a flexible tail is developed. In this model, the oscillating frequency of the tail controls the forward velocity, and the body spline offset parameter controls the heading angle. The robotic fish were divided to two parts: a rigid body, and a flexible tail. The rigid body includes the head and the electrical and mechanical equipment. The bond graph model was developed and the numerical values were extracted from constructed robotic fish have also been hydrodynamically analyzed. Simulation results were quantitatively compared and verified with Matlab Simmechanics simulations. These simulations described the lateral movement... 

In the first part of the thesis, we introduce the structure of a Nano-Newton CMOS-MEMS capacitive force sensor. This force sensor has been utilized out-of-plane sensing mechanism with high accuracy and reliability. Also, we discuss about sensitivity analysis of this force sensor. The largest change of capacitance (increased capacitance + decreased capacitance) occurs in ℓ=2/3. Sensitivity for increased capacitance grows by 8.33% and for decreased capacitance grows by 2.27%. The proposed method provides useful guidelines to increase the sensitivity of the sensor up to 250%. In the second part, a fixed structure controller, PID type, is proposed to control and suppress the in-plane vibration... 

Todays, the exoskeleton is known as a practical device for use in robotic rehabilitation and elderly assistance and has attracted the attention of many researchers. Impedance control is the most widely recognized control strategy in research on exoskeletons. Impedance control can properly handle soft interaction of robots with the environment. Optimal target impedance selection can increase the performance of the overall system and guarantee the stability. The main objective of this research was to introduce a variable impedance control system and verifying the presented control system on an exoskeleton. In this research, an exoskeleton with 4 active DoF and 8 semi-passive DoF is designed... 

Pipeline systems are one of the cheapest ways for distribution and transportation of petroleum and natural gas. The testing of pipes used in the petroleum industry is necessary to avoid unplanned process interruptions, environmental pollution and provide good safety. One of the methods which is used for pipeline inspection is the ultrasonic non-destructive testing (NDT) technique. The use of conventional NDT techniques such as ultrasonic thickness gauging is a slow inspection process, which becomes very expensive when full inspection is needed. Ultrasonic guided waves provide an appropriate fast screening technique. These waves stress the whole pipe wall and propagate along the length of the... 

Non-uniform laminated beams are being used in many engineering applications as primary elements. Helicopter blades, wind turbine blades and robot arms are examples of applications of these structures, in which the high stiffness-to-weight ratio and the non-uniform geometry are of high importance. Changing the thickness in laminated structures is a big challenge in fabrication view as different tapering configurations may significantly alter the stiffness of the structure. Thus, increasing the stiffness and dynamics characteristics of tapered beams with simple configuration is of high importance. The present work aims to investigate the effect of adding nano particles in resin during the... 

The aerial vehicle capable of vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), have created an interest in the community of researchers and admirers of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Among the existing UAV's, those with the capability of vertical takeoff and landing are prominent due to their higher maneuverability and hover capability. Quadrotors mostly have been considered as a flying robot for save and rescue operations in dangerous and unreachable places in addition to its military application. In cross shape of Quadrotor platform on each edge is appointed an electric motor with light rotors that usually are controled by considering motor rates as their only inputs. This thesis aims, to simulate and... 

Marine cranes are installed on vessels to transfer or transport payloads between ships or between ships and decks. One of the most critical issues in this case is the safety during load transferring. Marine cranes move or sway in unexpected direction, when they are influenced by wave, wind and storm. Theprocess of controlling them became difficult without using automatic control methods. Ingeneral, the movement of cranes has no prescribed path.This master thesis is about dynamic modeling and control of fixed crane placed on an offshore vessel. The main challenging problem in this work will be developing an accurate mathematical model of the crane. Therefore, bond graph method which is known... 

In recent years, leg pain is a consequence of inappropriate foot movement, which is an important health problem for us today. The health problems of the foot and the waist are due to wearing inappropriate footwear that is not designed for different activities. For example, Walking, long-standing on the feet, cycling and so on. A shoe insufflator is not suitable for walking, cycling, and standing. For designing an appropriate shoe insole for different activities, it is important to have a force determination profile for each person. This means that the insoles design shoes should be personal. A low-cost device has been designed, which can be used to measure the pressure on the sole of the... 

Nowadays, industrial companies deal with a wide range of serious problems in the field of power transmission maintenance and also fault detection. A large amount of money and time is spent on these issues in order to solve them; consequently, there is an essential need for this subject. In this thesis, in order to tackle those major issues which were referred above, an artificial neural network is trained with only one hidden layer. Also, a suitable database for training an efficient neural network is needed. Thus, a one-stage gearbox system with appropriate degrees of freedom is used to set up referred database. In this system, a crack is imposed to a tooth of spur gear with different sizes... 

Nowadays, as technology grows, human life formation changes every single second. These changes sometimes create harmful habits and effects on our lifestyle, which unfortunately brings various types of disabilities and disorders. SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder) and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are common disorders in children and usually show themselves in younger ages. The cause of these disorders is not unique and multiple factors can lead it. Fortunately, they can be easily treated by considering the appropriate treatments. Research that has been performed on any treatment device available for children with SPD and ADHD disorder shows that the sense of balance has not... 

In this thesis, kinematic, dynamic modeling and simulation, and control of SQ15-06N industrial robot have been presented. This robot is mostly used in the painting industry. Studying the robot requires familiarity with the robot programming and the hardware used in the robot. In this research, robot characteristics such as repeatability, load carrying capacity and accessibility have been investigated. The principles of industrial robot programming and robot programming language have been studied. The use of simulation software is common due to cost savings, reduced time, no need for robots and controllers, and the ability to test programs in a virtual environment. For this purpose, the... 

The precise positioning of magnetic catheters is critical for a range of medical procedures, ensuring efficacy while minimizing potential complications. This research delves into the position control of a magnetic catheter influenced by an external permanent magnet. Due to the intricate and complex equations describing the plant's behavior, a neural network approach was deemed suitable for modeling. Using a 5 degree of freedom manipulator carrying an external permanent magnet, data was gathered from real-world positionings, tracking the coordination of the magnetic catheter's end. These data points served to train the neural network, subsequently allowing for an effective simulation of the... 

A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a communication system that does not need any peripheral muscular activity. The huge goal of BCI is to translate brain activity into a command for a computer. One of the most important topics in the brain-computer interface is motor imagery (MI), which shows the reconstruction of subjects. The electrical activities of the brain are measured as electroencephalogram (EEG). EEG signals behave as low to noise ratio also show the dynamic behaviors.In the present work, a novel approach has been employed which is based on feature extraction with discretion wavelet transform (DWT), support vector machine (SVM), Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Convolutional...