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Playing and raving are important for child development. Injuries, diseases or congenital deformities can limit them in doing so. Orthoses that support these children, are usually custom made which requires manual labor. In research, 3D-printig of those devices is often proposed. To have a fully digital process chain, additional techniques are required, which are fundamental for the orthosis fit and efficacy. Within this contribution we describe all necessary steps from recording patient’s individual anthropometric data to automated design of structural parts. We show existing approaches and new concepts and highlight difficulties and challenges., Transactions on Additive Manufacturing Meets Medicine, Vol 1 (2019): Trans. AMMM

Propulsion of swimming robots at the surface and underwater is largely dominated by rotary propellers due to high thrust, but at the cost of low efficiency. Due to their inherently high speed turning motion, sharp propeller blades and generated noise, they also present a disturbance to maritime ecosystems. Our work presents a bio-inspired approach to efficient and eco-friendly swimming with moderate to high thrust. This paper describes the concept, development and experimental validation of the novel anguilliform robot MAR. With 15 elements making up the 0.5 m long propulsive section and driven by a single, speed-controlled brushless DC motor (BLDC), the robot creates a smooth continuous traveling wave for propulsion. Steering and autonomy are realized by an actuated head with integrated batteries that serves as a front-rudder. Almost neutral buoyancy paired with individually actuated pectoral fins furthermore enable submerged swimming and diving maneuvers. MAR accomplished high thrusts at a moderate power consumption in first performance tests. The achieved maximum velocity and the speed related efficiency (defined as the achieved speed over the power consumption m Ws(-1)) did not fulfill the expectations in the first tests (in comparison to commercial rotary thrusters), which can be largely attributed to the spatial limitations and an imperfect test setup. Nevertheless, the potential towards highly efficient and high thrust propulsion is visible and will be further investigated in future efforts.