Thermally Drawn-Based Microtubule Soft Continuum Robot for Cardiovascular Intervention.

Cardiovascular disease is becoming the leading cause of human mortality. In order to address this, flexible continuum robots have emerged as a promising solution for miniaturizing and automating vascular interventional equipment for diagnosing and treating cardiovascular diseases. However, existing continuum robots used for vascular intervention face challenges such as large cross-sectional sizes, inadequate driving force, and lack of navigation control, preventing them from accessing cerebral blood vessels or capillaries for medical procedures.

An ultra-broadband frequency-agile terahertz perfect absorber with perturbed MoS plasmon modes.

Multidomain dynamic manipulations for terahertz (THz) absorbers usually necessitate the orchestrated actions of several active elements, inevitably complicating the structural design and elongating the modulation time. Herein, we utilize the coupling between the total reflection prism and electrically-driven MoS to activate a tight field confinement in a deep-subwavelength interlayer, ultimately achieving frequency-agile absorption adjustments only with a gate voltage. Theoretical and simulation analysis results indicate that the redistributed electric field and susceptible dielectric response are attributed to the limited spatial near-field perturbation of surface plasmon resonances.

Intelligent fault detection scheme for constant-speed wind turbines based on improved multiscale fuzzy entropy and adaptive chaotic Aquila optimization-based support vector machine.

Timely and effective fault detection is essential to ensure the safe and reliable operation of wind turbines. However, due to the complex kinematic mechanisms and harsh working environments of wind turbine equipment, it is difficult to extract sensitive features and detect faults from acquired wind turbine signals. To address this challenge, a novel intelligent fault detection scheme for constant-speed wind turbines based on refined time-shifted multiscale fuzzy entropy (RTSMFE), supervised isometric mapping (SI), and adaptive chaotic Aquila optimization-based support vector machine (ACAOSVM) is proposed.

Cu Nanowires and Nanoporous Ag Matrix Fabricated through Directional Solidification and Selective Dissolution of Ag-Cu Eutectic Alloys.

Cu nanowires and a nanoporous Ag matrix were fabricated through directional solidification and selective dissolution of Ag-Cu eutectic alloys. Ag-39.9at.

Ensemble Dilated Convolutional Neural Network and Its Application in Rotating Machinery Fault Diagnosis.

Fault diagnosis of rotating machinery is an attractive yet challenging task. This paper presents a novel intelligent fault diagnosis scheme for rotating machinery based on ensemble dilated convolutional neural networks. The novel fault diagnosis framework employs a model training strategy based on early stopping optimization to ensemble several one-dimensional dilated convolutional neural networks (1D-DCNNs).

Wearable Real-Time Gesture Recognition Scheme Based on A-Mode Ultrasound.

A-mode ultrasound has the advantages of high resolution, easy calculation and low cost in predicting dexterous gestures. In order to accelerate the popularization of A-mode ultrasound gesture recognition technology, we designed a human-machine interface that can interact with the user in real-time. Data processing includes Gaussian filtering, feature extraction and PCA dimensionality reduction.

Bioinspired soft microrobots actuated by magnetic field.

In contrast to traditional large-scale robots, which require complicated mechanical joints and material rigidity, microrobots made of soft materials have exhibited amazing features and great potential for extensive applications, such as minimally invasive surgery. However, microrobots are faced with energy supply and control issues due to the miniaturization. Magnetic field actuation emerges as an appropriate approach to tackle with these issues.

Visible Light-Driven Jellyfish-like Miniature Swimming Soft Robot.

Soft actuators that exhibit large deformation and can move at a fast speed in response to external stimuli have been in high demand for biomimetic applications. In this paper, we propose a convenient approach to fabricate a reversible and thermal-responsive composite hydrogel. Under the irradiation of visible light, the striped hydrogel can bend at a speed of up to 65.

Modified multiscale weighted permutation entropy and optimized support vector machine method for rolling bearing fault diagnosis with complex signals.

The rolling bearing vibration signals are complex, non-linear, and non-stationary, it is difficult to extract the sensitive features and diagnose faults by conventional signal processing methods. This paper focuses on the sensitive features extraction and pattern recognition for rolling bearing fault diagnosis and proposes a novel intelligent fault-diagnosis method based on generalized composite multiscale weighted permutation entropy (GCMWPE), supervised Isomap (S-Iso), and marine predators algorithm-based support vector machine (MPA-SVM). Firstly, a novel non-linear technology named GCMWPE was presented, allowing the extraction of bearing features from multiple scales and enabling the construction of a high-dimensional feature set.

Biomimetic soft micro-swimmers: from actuation mechanisms to applications.

Underwater robot designs inspired by the behavior and morphological characteristics of aquatic animals can provide reinforced mobility and energy efficiency. In the past two decades, the emerging materials science and integrated circuit technology have been combined and applied to various types of bionic soft underwater miniaturized robots by researchers around the world. Further, the potential applications of biomimetic soft micro-swimmers in the biological and medical fields have been explored.

Thin thermally grown oxide thickness detection in thermal barrier coatings based on SWT-BP neural network algorithm and terahertz technology.

Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy is a contactless and nondestructive testing technique that is often used to measure the thickness of layered materials. However, the technique presents limited thickness detection resolution, especially in the thin thermally grown oxide (TGO) of thermal barrier coatings whose thickness is below 30 µm. In this study, an SWT-BP algorithm combining a stationary wavelet transform (SWT) and a backpropagation (BP) neural network was proposed, and the regression coefficient of SWT-detailed results was 0.

Untethered microgripper-the dexterous hand at microscale.

Untethered microgrippers that can navigate in hard-to-reach and unpredictable environments are significantly important for biomedical applications such as targeted drug delivery, micromanipulation, minimally invasive surgery and in vivo biopsy. Compared with the traditional tethered microgrippers, the wireless microgrippers, due to the exceptional characteristics such as miniaturized size, untethered actuation, dexterous and autonomous motion, are projected to be promising microtools in various future applications. In this review, we categorize the untethered microgrippers into five major classes, i.

Screw theory based mathematical modeling and kinematic analysis of a novel ankle rehabilitation robot with a constrained 3-PSP mechanism topology.

As a common athletics injury in orthopedics clinic, ankle injury may affect a person's daily life and ankle injury rehabilitation has gained increasing interests from the medical and robotic societies. A novel hybrid ankle rehabilitation robot is proposed, which composing of a serial and a parallel part. In order to analyze its kinematic performances, the parallel part of the robot is simplified as a constrained 3-PSP parallel mechanism.

Tandem polymer solar cells: simulation and optimization through a multiscale scheme.

In this paper, polymer solar cells with a tandem structure were investigated and optimized using a multiscale simulation scheme. In the proposed multiscale simulation, multiple aspects - optical calculation, mesoscale simulation, device scale simulation and optimal power conversion efficiency searching modules - were studied together to give an optimal result. Through the simulation work, dependencies of device performance on the tandem structures were clarified by tuning the thickness, donor/acceptor weight ratio as well as the donor-acceptor distribution in both active layers of the two sub-cells.

FDTD-based quantitative analysis of terahertz wave detection for multilayered structures.

Experimental investigations have shown that terahertz pulsed imaging (TPI) is able to quantitatively characterize a range of multilayered media (e.g., biological issues, pharmaceutical tablet coatings, layered polymer composites, etc.