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This paper presents the design, fabrication, experimental results and related discussion of a portable bending enhancing silicone mold structure for biomedical applications in which a high-sensitive but low-cost force measurement structure with a large-dynamic range is required. Proposed system is composed of a replaceable parts like graphite coated Strathmore® 400 series Bristol paper and cheap RTV-2 silicone molds. The results shows that low-cost, portable and high-sensitive force and strain sensor systems can be realized for point-of-care biomedical applications in the future.

This paper proposes a novel disposable linear absolute encoder system and its peripheral electronic readout circuitry to be used for the localization of force in a continuum media such as a flexible robotic arm. The proposed structure relies on the design of graphite layers on a flexible surface that shows varying resistance based on the applied strain. The proposed topology can localize the force applied on a continuous paper based sensor having the geometry of an absolute encoder system. The successful results obtained from the experiments prove the efficacy of the proposed system while opening new paradigms for the possibility of contact force localization in flexible structures like soft robots.

This paper presents a controller structure for the continuous and robust modification of motion for multi body systems encountering contact with an environment during free motion. The presented algorithm relies on the reformulation of the position tracking error with a term proportional to the reaction force. With the proposed method, fusion of the position and the force controllers can be achieved which provide the robot with certain level of compliance. The derivation of the proposed method is followed by experiments made on a pantograph mechanism actuated by direct drive linear motors. The results obtained from the experiments illustrate the success of the proposed control architecture in providing a natural behavior for the robotic systems working in constrained environments.