Design, analysis, and demonstration of the COAST guidewire robot with middle tube rotation for endovascular interventions.

Minimally invasive procedures for endovascular interventions involve manual navigation of a guidewire. Endovascular interventions encompassing highly tortuous vessels would benefit from guidewires which exhibit higher dexterity. This paper introduces a version of the COAST (COaxially Aligned STeerable) guidewire system capable of exhibiting higher dexterity.

Overtwisting and Coiling Highly Enhance Strain Generation of Twisted String Actuators.

Twisted string actuators (TSAs) have exhibited great promise in robotic applications by generating high translational force with low input torque. To further facilitate their robotic applications, it is strongly desirable but challenging to enhance their consistent strain generation while maintaining compliance. Existing studies predominantly considered overtwisting and coiling after the regular twisting stage to be undesirable-nonuniform and unpredictable knots, entanglements, and coils formed to create an unstable and failure-prone structure.

Three-dimensional global acceleration estimation in the presence of rotation using an inertial measurement unit for whole-body vibration studies.

Off-road vehicle operators are likely exposed to not only a high level but also different types of whole-body vibration (WBV) such as significant non-vertical and/or rotational accelerations. To evaluate the effects of these different WBV exposures, it is necessary to first correctly estimate the acceleration of the vehicle considering not only translational but also rotational motion. The main objective of this study was to propose and evaluate an algorithm to accurately estimate global acceleration of a vehicle using magnitude-based filtering and inertial navigation with an inertial measurement unit.