Patient-specific CT-based 3D printing models may assist device selection and prediction of device compression in the context of interventional LAA closure.

No abstract

The wiring system is one of the most important and one of the most expensive part of modern passenger vehicles. It ́s production is done manually to nearly 100% since the early years of car manufacturing. Until today it wasn ́t possible to automatize these cost-intensive step of the car production in an effective and cost efficient way. This paper shows how the routing process of the wiring harness as a part of the whole production process can be automatized with easy and cost efficient production methods. Collaborative robots and 3D-printed prototypes of cable grippers were used to treat with the complexity of the job and to finally create a sustainable and cost efficient production system. Further the routing concept has been brought to a prototypical production cell which has been tested in various routing experiments at the institute’s laboratory. Finally, a discussion of the results brings up the strengths and weaknesses of the concept and shows possible solutions.

The cutting-edge robotic technology can deal with a lot of complex tasks. However, one of the most challenging technological obstacles in robotics is the development of soft actuators. Remaining challenges in the field of drive technology can be overcome with innovative actuator concepts, for example dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs). DEAs show numerous advantages in comparison to prevailing robotic actuators that are based on geared servomotors: They are formflexible, inherently compliant, can store and recuperate kinetic energy, feature high power-to-weight ratio and high energy density that is comparable to human skeletal muscles, and finally can be designed to perform natural motion patterns other than rotation. In this article, after a review on disadvantages of state-of-art robotic drives, which are stimulus for a research on the promising drive solution, benefits of DEAs will be presented with regard to the possibility of applications in soft robotics. Finally, the article will conclude with a brief report on the ongoing research effort at the Institute for Factory Automation and Production Systems (FAPS) with two major foci -the development of an automated manufacturing process for stacked DEAs and a lightweight control hardware. Drawbacks of Prevailing Robotic ActuatorsLeading-edge high-DOF robotic systems show a broad set of astonishing capabilities, such as walking in rough and randomly structured terrain or grasping objects adaptively by merging multi-modal sensory data. However, most of the robotic systems today are actuated by prevailing geared servomotors, hydraulic or pneumatic actuator systems.The performance of these robot systems is usually impaired due to technological limitations of these actuators: Their dynamics and agility are severely limited primarily due to their poor power-to-weight ratio and rigid kinematics. Also, nearly none of the established robotic systems can be operated untethered for a sufficient amount of time and range distance. Furthermore, many mechatronic prosthetic devices driven by geared servomotors are affected by lack of compliance due to the rigidly coupled mechanical components, for example finger elements in active prosthetic hands.

Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) have a lot of advantages such as high energy efficiency, unrivaled power-toweight ratio and soft structure. Furthermore this new kind of actuator is capable of sensing its deformation and status without additional sensing devices. Therefore, DEAs are acknowledged as self-sensing actuators. In this contribution a new self-sensing technique for DEAs is presented, in which the capacitance of DEAs under deformation is measured using high voltage signals. For this purpose, simple signal processing algorithms and a novel method of superimposing actuating and sensing signals are implemented. By connecting the ground potential electrode of the DEA to a sinusoidal sensing signal, the DEA is used as a passive first order high-pass filter. The other electrode of the DEA is connected to the actuation voltage, which is superimposed with the sinusoidal signal. The amplitude of this signal is basically dependent on the capacitance of the actuator. Therefore, the change of the capacitance induced by contraction of the actuator alters the amplitude of the sinusoidal signal. The amplitude change can then be interpreted as capacity change and can be used to estimate the mechanical deformation of the DEA. In comparison to existing methods, this approach is promising for a miniaturized circuit and therefore for later use in mobile systems. In this paper, the new concept of superimposing actuating and sensing signals for self-sensing DEAs is validated with an experimental setup and several known capacities. The first results are presented and discussed in detail.