This paper presents the design and control of an actuated bivalve robot, which has been developed to study the burrowing locomotion of bivalves in sediment. The setup consists of a tank filled with sand and water, plastic models of bivalve shells capable of expelling water and an external actuation mechanism simulating the rocking burrowing motion typically used by these animals. The realistic shell shapes have been realized using three-dimensional plotting techniques allowing testing influences of different shell shapes and surface structures (sculptures) on the burrowing efficiency. Based on the experimental setup, the burrowing process has been reproduced. The results show that this setup can be used to identify correlations in the burrowing process. Further experimental work will investigate the influence of factors such as shell shape and sculpture or the motion sequence on the burrowing performance. Keywords: biorobotics; biomimetics; burrowing locomotion; bivalves Actuated Bivalve Robot Study of the Burrowing Locomotion in SedimentAgathe Koller-Hodac, Daniel P. Germann, Alexander Gilgen, Katja Dietrich, Maik Hadorn, Wolfgang Schatz and Peter Eggenberger HotzAbstract-This paper presents the design and control of an actuated bivalve robot, which has been developed to study the burrowing locomotion of bivalves in sediment. The setup consists of a tank filled with sand and water, plastic models of bivalve shells capable of expelling water and an external actuation mechanism simulating the rocking burrowing motion typically used by these animals. The realistic shell shapes have been realized using three-dimensional plotting techniques allowing testing influences of different shell shapes and surface structures (sculptures) on the burrowing efficiency.Based on the experimental setup, the burrowing process has been reproduced. The results show that this setup can be used to identify correlations in the burrowing process. Further experimental work will investigate the influence of factors such as shell shape and sculpture or the motion sequence on the burrowing performance.

Following knee injury or surgery, knee rehabilitation therapy is an essential step to recover normal joint function for daily activities. Physical rehabilitation can take several weeks or even months until full range of motion and joint flexibility are regained. Knee rehabilitation will lead to satisfactory results only at the condition that exercises are performed regularly. An important part in knee rehabilitation is the patellar mobilization which is nowadays performed manually by the physical therapist. This paper presents a new approach for assisting patellar mobilization during knee rehabilitation programs. The use of a robotic device for physiotherapy allows to perform exercises on a regular basis during the whole recovery period and to quantify therapy progress. The physical therapist creates a personalized training protocol depending on the patient's pathology and supervises the training program at the clinic. After several days at the clinics, the patient usually returns back home. Using the robotic device, she or he repeats predefined training sequences over several weeks. The device provides immediate feedback to the patient and the therapist. This feedback also helps the therapist to assess training progress when the patient comes to the therapy center for control sessions. Functional tests in clinics have shown that the use of an automated device for knee therapy increases the patient's motivation and supports the physical therapist in adjusting training programs for optimal joint recovery.

An elaborate study executed in the direction of exploring energy saving potential shows that more than 20% of electrical energy used in industry is used for pump systems. Experts calculate that more than 30% of this energy can be saved by improving control and diagnosis for pump systems. Unfortunately, the application ratio of such system is small and consequently a large demand for such technological advanced systems can still be observed in the pump industry. Because of this reason and still growing demand of saving energy in industry, two Universities in Germany and Switzerland together with leading German pump manufacturer decided to join their knowledge and skill to work on the project called "Smart Pump". This paper presents one of the first results of this project, which goal is the development of future control methods and diagnosis systems for intelligent pumps.

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