1,721,008 research outputs found
IMPROVING CONTROL DESIGN OF HAPTIC INTERFACES: AN INVESTIGATION ON THE MECHANICAL IMPEDANCE OF THE HUMAN HAND
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A new kinematic performance index for surgical robots design
No full textIn the last years a large number of new surgical devices has been developed so to improve the operation outcomes and reduce the patient's trauma. Nevertheless the dexterity and accuracy required in positioning the surgical devices are often unreachable if the surgeons are not assisted by a suitable system. Since a medical robot works in an operating room, close to the patient and the medical staff, it has to satisfy much stricter requirements with respect to an industrial one. From a kinematic point of view, the robot must reach any target position in the patient's body being less invasive as possible for the surgeon's workspace. In order to meet such requirements a suitable performance index to optimal kinematic design is needed. This paper proposes an optimal index which maximizes the robot workspace and minimizes the invasiveness with respect to the surgeon's workspace. The index is used to evaluate the performances of a commercial medical robot and will be very useful in the future design of a new special robot for neurosurgery
ELECTRIC LOADS IN RESIDENTIAL AND OFFICE BUILDINGS IN ITALY
No full textThe study presented in this paper was developed in the framework of a wide and long lasting research aimed at developing a platform to carry out energy simulation at district level, with particular reference to the Italian
conditions. In this context it was necessary to define hourly profiles regarding occupancy and the usage of lighting and
appliances for different building typologies. The importance of providing a proper definition of the electric demand is
well known because it affects both the building heating/cooling demand and the operation of power plants and control
systems. Usually reference mean values or statistically determined ones are adopted in dynamic simulations, while this
study compares several possible references, such as previous works, scientific reports related to monitoring projects of
existing buildings, norms and technical literature. Among these, the most complete reference was assumed as main data
source in order to elaborate the provided values and define hourly profiles for lighting and appliances in residential and
office buildings. In order to assign the proper scenario to different building typologies, the resulting electricity demands
were compared with results from monitoring projects, while the effect on the building thermal energy demand was
compared with the official Italian reference standard. Final consideration about electric profiles definition and future
developments are provided
ON THE DESIGN OF STATE OBSERVERS FOR FLEXIBLE LINK MECHANISMS
No full textThis paper presents a versatile approach to the synthesis of accurate state observers for flexible link mechanisms and manipulators. The design of a state observer should be always based on a model providing an adequate description of the system dynamics. However, when flexible link mechanisms are considered, the synthesis of a state observer becomes very challenging, since only nonlinear models may be adopted to reproduce the system dynamic response with adequate accuracy. In this work the possibility of employing a Kalman estimator together with a suitable piecewise-linear model is investigated. Numerical results prove the effectiveness of the proposed approach when it is applied to the synthesis of a state observer for a four-bar linkage with all the links flexible
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