AcousTac: Tactile Sensing with Acoustic Resonance for Electronics-Free Soft Skin.

Sound is a rich information medium that transmits through air; people communicate through speech and can even discern material through tapping and listening. To capture frequencies in the human hearing range, commercial microphones typically have a sampling rate of over 40 kHz. These accessible acoustic technologies are not yet widely adopted for the explicit purpose of giving robots a sense of touch.

Skin Sensitivity Assessment Using Smartphone Haptic Feedback.

This work presents a smartphone application to assess cutaneous sensory perception by establishing Vibrational Perception Thresholds (VPTs). Cutaneous sensory perception diagnostics allow for the early detection and symptom tracking of tactile dysfunction. However, lack of access to healthcare and the limited frequency of current screening tools can leave skin sensation impairments undiscovered or unmonitored.

A Wearable Testbed for Studying Variable Transmission in Body-Powered Prosthetic Gripping.

For those with upper limb absence, body-powered prostheses continue to be popular for many activities despite being an old technology; these devices can provide both inherent haptic feedback and mechanical robustness. Yet, they can also result in strain and fatigue. Body-powered prosthetic graspers typically consist of a simple lever providing a relatively constant transmission ratio between the input forces from the user's shoulder harness and the grip force of their prosthetic prehensor.

"Self-care selfies": Patient-uploaded videos capture meaningful changes in dexterity over 6 months.

Objective: Upper extremity function reflects disease progression in multiple sclerosis (MS). This study evaluated the feasibility, validity, and sensitivity to change of remote dexterity assessments applying human pose estimation to patient-uploaded videos.

Methods: A discovery cohort of 50 adults with MS recorded "selfie" videos of self-care tasks at home: buttoning, brushing teeth, and eating.

Efficient reciprocating burrowing with anisotropic origami feet.

Origami folding is an ancient art which holds promise for creating compliant and adaptable mechanisms, but has yet to be extensively studied for granular environments. At the same time, biological systems exploit anisotropic body forces for locomotion, such as the frictional anisotropy of a snake's skin. In this work, we explore how foldable origami feet can be used to passively induce anisotropic force response in granular media, through varying their resistive plane.

Characterizing the Force-Motion Tradeoff in Body-Powered Transmission Design.

Upper-limb prosthesis users continue to reject devices despite continued research efforts. Today, the passive topology of body-powered prehensors, which physically transmits grasp force and position data between user and device, results in improved performance over myoelectric alternatives. However, the loads and postures on the user's body also result in discomfort, fatigue, and worsened grasp force control.

Mole crab-inspired vertical self-burrowing.

We present EMBUR- BUrrowing Robot-the first legged robot inspired by the Pacific mole crab, , capable of burrowing vertically downward. We choose as a model organism for its rapid downward burrowing behaviors, as it is four times as fast as the most rapid bivalve mollusk. Vertical burrowing in granular media is a challenging endeavor due to the tendency for the media to create upwards resistive forces on an intruder, even during purely horizontal motions.

Effect of variable transmission on body-powered prosthetic grasping.

Body-powered upper-limb prostheses remain a popular option for those with limb absence due to their passive nature. These devices typically feature a constant transmission ratio between the forces input by the user and the grasp forces output by the prosthetic gripper. Work incorporating continuously variable transmissions into robotic hands has demonstrated a number of benefits in terms of their motion and forces.

Hands in the Real World.

Robots face a rapidly expanding range of potential applications beyond controlled environments, from remote exploration and search-and-rescue to household assistance and agriculture. The focus of physical interaction is typically delegated to end-effectors-fixtures, grippers or hands-as these machines perform manual tasks. Yet, effective deployment of versatile robot hands in the real world is still limited to few examples, despite decades of dedicated research.

Motor-Augmented Wrist-Driven Orthosis: Flexible Grasp Assistance for People with Spinal Cord Injury.

This paper presents the design of a motor-augmented wrist-driven orthosis (MWDO) for improved grasp articulation for people with C6-C7 spinal cord injuries. Based on the traditional passive, wrist-driven orthotic (WDO) mechanism, the MWDO allows for both body-powered and motorized actuation of the grasping output thus enabling more flexible and dexterous operation. Here, the associated control scheme enables active decoupling of wrist and finger articulation, which can be useful during certain phases of manipulation tasks.