A Non-Contact Manipulation for Robotic Applications: A Review on Acoustic Levitation

Abstract

Robots play an important role all over the world in the industrial field in terms of dealing with various materials, performing duties quickly and high accuracy as well as in the pharmaceutical/chemical field since robots can handle some issues better than human. Robotic manipulation is the term used to describe how robots deal with many objects. This article reviews the contact and non-contact manipulation with their most common robotic applications and focusing on the non-contact manipulation since it can do specific tasks which contact manipulation cannot do. Reviewing of the robotic non-contact manipulation which include the metal-based robotic manipulation such as magnetic and electrostatic levitation and the non-metal-based robotic manipulation method such as aerodynamic and acoustic levitation have been made in this article. The main core of this article is acoustic levitation which considered one of the most important levitation and manipulation method due to the recent advancements that made it proper to deal with any kind of materials. Here, we review the renowned three methods of acoustic levitation that already using in robotic non-contact manipulation which are standing wave, near-field and single-beam acoustic levitation. Then, we present a performance characteristic of the reviewed methods and the summary of controlling strategies, followed by conclusion and future recommendations for acoustic levitation methods as a non-contact manipulation.

Variable stiffness soft robotic gripper: design, development, and prospects

“…Various forms of physical actuation methods exist, including thermal actuation [94,95,204,205], electrical actuation [206][207][208], magnetic actuation [52][53][54]209], optical actuation [210,211], humiditydriven actuation [212][213][214], and acoustic actuation [215][216][217]. Within the realm of robotic grippers, these actuation methods are implemented through specific means, such as DEs actuation [96, 147-149, 218, 219], ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMC) actuation [92,99,150,[220][221][222][223][224], SMA actuation [10,97,190,[225][226][227][228][229][230][231][232][233][234][235][236], SMPs actuation [25,76,100,228,[237]…”

Visualizing acoustic levitation with COMSOL Multiphysics and a simple experimental setup

“…Acoustic levitation has become a very attractive technology due to its diverse features [1]. One of them is that it allows the suspension of particles regardless of their composition as well as a manipulation environment in microgravity.…”

Sliding Mode Control Design for Magnetic Levitation System

“…Magnetic Levitation System (Maglev) or MLS is a system that levitates an object (usually iron-made objects) using an electromagnetic force [1]- [3]. MLS can be considered a futuristic technology [4] that has broad applications, such as in wind turbines [5], bearings [6] [7], suspensions [8], precision motion systems [9], biomedical [10] [11], Maglev fan [12], chemical [13], robotics [14] and maglev trains [15]- [18]. This technology makes the system highly efficient since no friction is made between the object and the system [19].…”