From meat to fish
A Web-exclusive sidebar accompanying the June 2010 cover story, "Testing Rx for medical mechatronics."
By Lawrence Maloney, Contributing Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 7/1/2010 12:00:00 AM
Return to "Testing Rx for medical mechatronics ."
While more than half of Kinea Design's projects target medical applications, the remainder run the gamut from industrial equipment to devices that support academic research.
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On the industrial side, the company is now beta-testing
"HookAssist," designed at the request of Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA),
which was looking for a technology that would relieve the burden on workers who
must debone heavy primary cuts of meat in processing plants.
Kinea engineers spent many hours observing workers in both the US and Australia as they stabilized a beef
carcass with a manual hook in one hand and cut off 30- to 40-lb sections of
meat with the other. What the engineers learned is that workers, while
welcoming ergonomic assistance from a robot, did not want it to hamper their
movements on the job.
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The resulting design features a two-axis power-assist device for the hook hand, which does 90% of the work of pulling and lifting the large section of cut meat, while allowing the worker four additional axes of passive motion of the hook. Mounted on a tower, the device lets the worker control the automated hook by grasping a handle on a gimbal.
Kinea's engineers made extensive use of the company's homegrown test tools, like the EKG virtual oscilloscope and the Greenbox test instrument. During test operation of HookAssist on meat-processing lines, EKG captured data, such as forces, velocities, and positions, from the device's control system to further refine the design. The Greenbox, with its extensive I/O for interfacing with the system's complex array of sensors and actuators, was routinely used for functional tests on node boards coming in from suppliers.
Underwater navigation
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Testing can get even more elaborate-and unconventional-on
mechatronics devices that Kinea has designed for academic researchers. For
example, working in collaboration with professor Malcolm MacIver of the
biomedical engineering department at Northwestern
University, Kinea
engineers developed a working, mechatronic version of the ghost knifefish,
whose ribbon-like propulsor and electric-field sensing gives it the ability to
make quick maneuvers in tight spaces.
Kinea's design featured a "fish-steak" actuator and
integrated electrodes to mimic the real-life behaviors of the knifefish. Each
actuator segment (fish-steak) contains a motor, a drivetrain, and a custom-designed
motor controller in a single module. Carrying both power and CAN bus signals,
the modules are joined by stack-through connectors running along the spine of
this "ghostbot."
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As an extension of the MacIver collaboration and supported by a
Navy small business technology transfer grant, Kinea also developed a new
sensing scheme inspired by the knifefish for possible use in autonomous
underwater navigation. Called the SensorPod, the 8-in.-long device features
electro-sensing for mapping and object avoidance as well as a custom
inductive-magneto sensor for estimating its velocity based on a measurement of
the ambient magnetic field of the earth.
To demonstrate the concept, Kinea engineers designed a testbed
featuring a passive gantry that suspends the SensorPod in a tank of water. An
off-the-shelf National Instruments USB data-acquisition system handled all the
analog inputs. "Everything was controlled in Matlab to keep things simple,"
said controls engineer James Solberg. "Matlab is wonderful for prototyping.
Some of these control algorithms are quite involved, and Matlab toolboxes save
you many hours of code development in C++."
In phase II of the project, funded by the Naval Research Lab, a
bigger SensorPod attached to the end effector of a motorized gantry will
navigate around obstacles in a much larger tank. Eventually, the system will be
tested in an open body of water.
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Video clips of Kinea Design's projects HookAssist for workers in meat-processing plants: http://www.kineadesign.com/portfolio/hookassist/videos/MVI_1069.mpg http://www.kineadesign.com/portfolio/hookassist/videos/MVI_1077.mpg http://www.kineadesign.com/portfolio/hookassist/videos/MVI_1115.mpg KineAssist for rehabilition of stroke victims: http://www.kineadesign.com/portfolio/kineassist/videos/dancing.mpg http://www.kineadesign.com/portfolio/kineassist/#gallery Tactor for restoring fingertip sensation to amputees: http://www.kineadesign.com/portfolio/tactor/videos/Tactor%20demo%20video.mpg http://www.kineadesign.com/portfolio/tactor/videos/Tactor%20Motions.mpg |
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