Sharif Digital Repository

No-one likes being confined to a hospital bed. Children particularly can feel lonely, bored or frightened in these conditions. Hours feel like days, and they may not be able to fully comprehend why they are there. Among kids hospitalized because of distinct diseases, children with cancer have incomparable status and needs. They experience physical and mental problems caused by cancer and medications. Cancer treatment may cause distress which can lessen the effectiveness of the treatment. Utilizing social robots to interact with children in clinical environments has been verified to both diminish their distress level and enhance the effectiveness of the treatment process. To improve the... 

The project aims to design and build a device that is capable of manipulation and control of micro-scale objects in dry and fluid medium. Among all the micro-manipulation methods, the use of magnetic fields has many applications. Because it has the ability to work without direct contact and also within a specified range for living tissue, is safe. To achieve this goal,manipulation systems ever made, were studied. Then, by presenting a conceptual design and the use of appropriate dynamic models for describing the behavior of micro-robot, the system performance was simulated. After this stage, The detailed design of the closed-loop system which must controls the position of the micro-robot... 

Distinguishing the structure of DNA is of outmost importance in the medicine and agriculture industry nowadays. Various methods have been suggested so far; however, high costs, incorrect results, and time-taking process are among main defects of them. Scientists try to find new ways for recognizing DNA structure and system in order to overcome such problems. One of these new methods is absorbing and passing DNA through Nano-pores in an electrolyte solution under the influence of an electrical field. The basis of this method is the ionized currents which occur due to the passing of DNA through Nano-pores. Because each DNA base pairs can form a barrier corresponding to a unique measured value,... 

In this thesis, Model reference adaptive control in fractional order systems was discussed. Various types of this problem can be introduced based on fractional order dynamics in system equations, reference model equations or adaptation laws, which some of them play more important role in real-world applications, also some of them have more complexity in governing mathematical equations and in stability analysis. Fractional order dynamics were recently used in many real-world applications like model reference control, Chaos synchronization and Chaos control, so studying adaptive control in this fields, could be important. Nowadays, Model reference adaptive control was used in many industrial... 

In this thesis, the purpose of the research was to develop a four-wheeled Mobile platform (Lower body) with three degrees of freedom for a humanoid robot upper body which is called RASA. RASA robot was designed and constructed for helping kids who have speech and hearing impairments. The objective was to develop a low-cost and affordable robot as compared to its international models to be used at home or school as a teacher assistant. RASA can help kids to learn signs as fast as possible due to the game-based and entertaining education system. The wheeled base platform consists of a new mechanism with 6 bar linkage for bending robot from the hip to about 60 degrees from a vertical position... 

Up to now many different mechanisms have been proposed for a swimming micro robot, but most of the previously designed micro robots are not able to perform three- dimensional maneuver and the motion of the proposed swimmers are limited along a straight line or in a plane. Some important issues that must be ruled in designing micro robots include: reduced number of actuators, high maneuverability, high motion controllability and elimination of lateral drift. In this study the aim is to design a micro swimmer with the aforementioned capabilities as much as possible. In this regard, many different ideas based on the quadrotor motion, flagellated bacteria and spiral flagellated bacteria, Fish... 

Hospitals are considered to be environments for employing social robots. However, it is necessary to provide conditions for the operation of these robots in such environment. Factors such as slippery and sloping surfaces, as well as the risk of falling robots from impact by the patient or other factors, cause the performance of these robots in these environments to be difficult. Friction and slip is a challenge posed by the path tracking mission in the hospital environment for these robots. In this regard, one of the objectives of this project is robot control to track the path on the surfaces in the event of a slip. The robot studied in this project is omnidirectional robot including... 

The present case study investigates the effect of applying a humanoid robot as a teacher- assistant to teach a foreign language (English in this case) to Iranian children with autism. Two groups of three male high-functioning autistic students (6-10 years old) with little or no background in English participated in the current study. The humanoid robot NAO made by Aldebaran Robotics was used as a teacher assistant to teach English to the Robot Assisted Language Learning (RALL) group. The non-RALL group received the same lessons simply without the presence of the robot in teaching sessions. However, the non-RALL group also had the chance to interact with the robot through some robotic games... 

The purpose of this research is the design and fabrication of a mobile social robot for children with cancer. This robot is named Arash. Interaction with the robot can improve children's education, as well as their mental condition. Design and development of Arash robot project have been carried out in a number of M.Sc. projects. In the present study, it is specifically focused on three areas of activity:
1. Design and fabrication of the robot head (and the overall appearance of the robot)
2. Design and development of human-robot interactions
3. Social and educational interactions/interventions of the robot with children
In this study, with the cooperation of child... 

Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) is regarded as one of the most significant advances in robotics in recent decades. It enables robots to map their surrounding environments without the need for external equipment and simultaneously determine their position on this map. In the present study, this technique was implemented on Arash social robot to enable it to estimate its position in the environment with decent accuracy and potentially be able to automatically move towards the targets determined on the map using a path planning algorithm. At first, Arash robot mechanically was redesigned for this technique, and then the hardware and software needed to high-level and low-level... 

The most crucial physical component in human-robot interaction is the head of the robot, which may have the potential to interact via representing facial expressions. There are several different types of robotic heads. This thesis presents the design process and realization of a retro-projected social robotic head, “Taban”. Taban is a cost-effective portable robot with a lifelike robotic face which can produce different facial expressions, different 3D face animation avatars (ranging from different ages, races, and gender) with the help of rear-projector in its head to projects animations onto a translucent 3D printout mask. It has a neck system with two degrees of freedom, a camera in the... 

In this thesis we try to find optimized parameters for imaging and manipulation of a biosample with AFM. For this we have prepared a numerous Molecular Dynamics simulation and find some reliable result. So, first we have focused on imaging process in Non contact mode (the less harmful mode). Then we headed into the manipulation process. The main problem about manipulating a biosample is the environment. In imaging section, the process of imaging a biomolecule by AFM is modeled using molecular dynamics simulations. Since the large normal force exerted by the tip on the biosample in contact and tapping modes may damage the sample structure and produce irreversible deformation, the non-contact... 

Conventional two-dimensional photos are images of a three-dimensional scene. In fact, since the recording medium record only the intensity of the incoming light, information about the phase of the light couldn't be recorded and this results in making 2D photos from a real 3D scene.
In this research a mechanism for getting three-dimensional images in endoscopy and laparoscopy by Digital Holography has been designed based on the criteria standards in this field.
 

Conventional two-dimensional photos are images of a three-dimensional scene. In fact, since the recording medium record only the intensity of the incoming light, information about the phase of the light couldn't be recorded and this results in making 2D photos from a real 3D scene.
In this research a mechanism for getting three-dimensional images in endoscopy and laparoscopy by Digital Holography has been designed based on the criteria standards in this field.
 

Holography is a lensless process with a unique characteristic of recording a 3D image on a 2D plate! From the first hologram constructed by Gabor, the development of holography found several techniques. For the aim of fabricating holograms of Sharif University of Technology, International Campus-Kish Island’logo, we have chosen transmission and rainbow techniques because of their accuracy and applicability. A recording material is needed for the process. Photoresist was found more appropriate to work on. Besides He-Cd and He-Ne lasers are mostly in use in general holography. The laboratory work is an inseparable part which is achieved at laser and hologram unit of Atomic Energy... 

Molecular Dynamics as a powerful method in the field of Nano-simulation has been widely used in recent years. Different contact processes such as Nano-manipulation, AFM Imaging, and Nano-indentation can be simulated using this method. There have been numerous researches done on calculating techniques of simulation of different phenomena in Nano-technology. Specifically, friction and Nano-indentation which are parts of Nano-contact processes have been simulated by different investigators. However, on some other parts, e.g. Nano-manipulation and AFM Imaging, there are few studies done up to now. Thus, a simulation and computational software seems necessary in this field. The main goal of... 

Leakages in the transmission pipes include a large proportion of water loss. Scarcity of fresh water in one hand and high costs to compensate for drop in pressure and flow lines, on the other hand, detection and location of leaks have been important. This phenomenon can also cause a lot of damage to the urban contextures. This thesis considers the leakage in tubing buried in the soil by means of a floating robot. Since the rate of leakage, specifies the requirement to perform maintenances, In addition to finding the leakage, an overall estimate of the amount of leakage is desired.Since non-destructive leak detection is desired, the mechanical-magnetic sensor is designed. First, for the... 

Although Robot Assisted Language Learning (RALL) has recently received attention as a tool for language learning, its role in pragmatic development has gone unnoticed. Hence, this study sought to explore the effect of RALL on pragmatic learning of greeting, thanking, and request speech acts by young Persian-speaking EFL learners. To this end, 38 preschool female and male kids (3-6 years old) were assigned to the RALL (19 students) and game-based (19 students) groups. The humanoid robot for the RALL group was used as an assistant to the teacher while for the game-based group the instruction was based on gaming methods such as command, mystery bag and pass the ball games. The instructional... 

The main goal of this thesis is the design and development of a rehabilitation device for helping patients “to improve blood circulation” & retain and recover their abilities if possible that were lost during the stroke or a accident like that (my research in karaj/iran shows that it is possible by just movement of the specific body part). The focus is on hand in this thesis because Injuries to the hand are common and can be very debilitating since our hands are our primary means for interacting with our world. For rehabilitation in case of human hand there are several practices that should be done for patients either in home or in a rehabilitation center, time and money that is supposed to... 

In the present study, a new version of haptic devices is presented in which user’s hand is in contact with the device just while collision with virtual surface. In this system, the position of user’s finger can be traced by using a camera and the haptic device follows user’s finger at the distance of about two centimeters. While the haptic device approaches to the virtual surface, gradually reduces its speed and stops about two centimeters distant of virtual plane. Then user’s hand collides with the haptic device which is static. Greater fidelity, transparency, more stability and also no need to large actuators are of the advantages of this system. In this project, first we present a new...