Fig 5 - uploaded by Guillaume Jacques Laurent
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Cross view of the induced air flow surface showing the generation of the induced air flow (the path of the air flow is darkened).
Source publication
Potential air flows can be used to perform non-prehensile contactless manipulations of objects gliding on air-hockey table. In this paper, we introduce a general method able to perform 3-DOF position control of an object with potential air flow manipulators. This approach is based on an inverse modeling control scheme to perform closed-loop positio...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... in constant levitation thanks to the air cushion created by the airflow that comes through a common air inlet. The specificity is that the object can be moved on the table by generating strong vertical air jets through specific holes of the surface. These vertical air jets create a suction effect that pulls the object towards the nozzle (cf. Fig. 5). Each nozzle is driven by an independent solenoid valve. Default settings for operating pressures are 10 kPa for levitation and 500 kPa for ...
Citations
... Their method allows the movement of an object to a unique final pose using airflow fields without sensors. Laurent et al. [31], [32], [33] used a similar traction principle to move a product using an array of vertical air jets to induce desired potential air flow over the surface. This device is able to move centimeter-sized objects up to 0.2 m.s − 1 with millimeter closed-loop positioning accuracy. ...
Recent studies show that the handling of thin wafers in the photovoltaic industry can lead to unacceptable yields due to cell scratching and breaking. This paper presents the concept and design of a novel modular conveyor that is intended for handling planar fragile objects at a high speed without contact. Each element of the conveyor is a square block that is able to generate tilted air jets that lift and push the object in a single direction. Various handling functions can thus be achieved by the assembly of several blocks. To manage the complexity of assembling systems composed of hundreds of blocks, an automatized design methodology is proposed. This process gives the best topology of the conveyor that meets expected specifications such as trajectory, speed, and travel time. The optimization relies on the physical model of the modular system describing the motion of the object pushed by directed air jets. Experimental comparisons show that the simulation predicts accurately the motion of a glass wafer according to the arrangement of the blocks and the volume of air flow. A maximal speed of 0.3 m/s was experimentally observed and, on larger simulated conveyors, the speed of the wafer could theoretically reach 2.9 m/s.
... Not only did they fabricate micro air-jet valves, but also proposed the concept of distributed manipulation using micro actuator arrays. Since then, many other types of contactless pneumatic manipulation systems are introduced such as air bearing using ultrasound [8,9,10,11], manipulation using passive air flow [12,13,14,15], manipulation using induced air flow [16,17,18,19], manipulation using tilted air-jet array [20,21,22,23,24,25]. ...
... This velocity field is also valid for a vertical air-jet that impinges from the surface. In this case, λ is also proportional to the gas flow rate through the orifice [17]. ...
... In order to save energy, Delettre et al. [17] proposed to use the total air consumption as objective function d. They also introduced some lower and upper limits to constraint the volume flow of each actuator. ...
Many manipulation systems using air flow have been proposed for object handling in a non-prehensile way and without solid-to-solid contact. Potential applications include high-speed transport of fragile and clean products and high-resolution positioning of thin delicate objects. This paper discusses a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art pneumatic manipulation from the macro scale to the micro scale. The working principles and actuation methods of previously developed air-bearing surfaces, ultra-sonic bearing surfaces, air-flow manipulators, air-film manipulators, and tilted air-jet manipulators are reviewed with a particular emphasis on the modeling and the control issues. The performance of the previously developed devices are compared quantitatively and open problems in pneumatic manipulation are discussed.
... Other approaches include mechanical wheel based arrangements [23,26], sound based solutions [31] and electromechanical actuators to excite membranes [12,27]. Most of these manipulation methods are using the underling physical phenomena in an intelligent way to control the manipulation, i.e. flow interactions [16], and anisotropic friction control [30]. Various control systems have been proposed mainly on the concept of closed-loop control, with feedback provided either from a camera [15] or other form of light information, i.e. photodiodes [11]. ...
We present a cellular automaton architecture for massive-parallel manipulation tasks. The cellular-automaton manipulator is an array of actuators, which interact locally with each other and generate coordinated manipulation forces for precise translation of the manipulated object. The cellular-automaton actuator arrays behave as an excitable medium, where initial perturbation leads to propagation of excitation waves. The excitation waves are physically mapped onto the hardware actuation waves. We analyse different types of excitation and manipulation patterns and physical implementations of the actuating surface.
... In [15], the basics of fluid mechanics have been introduced. In [16], it has been suggested that any vertical airjet could be considered as a sink which attracts the air through itself. Equation (1) shows that the velocity vector of the air U i has direct relation with the strength of i th sink which is Λ i and inverse relationship with distance of the sink which is r i . ...
... From [16] the given forces in each dimension are as follows: ...
The rise of the Internet of Things raises many challenges among which is the ability to efficiently simulate a real 3D environment with intelligent objects able to sense and act. Furthermore, the apparition of micro-objects able to communicate forces such as a simulator to scale up in the number of simulated nodes. In this paper, we report the progresses made in the design of a new kind of simulator named VisibleSim. VisibleSim mixes a discrete-event core simulator with discrete-time functionnalities in the most efficient way so that simulations can scale up in numbers. Experiments show that VisibleSim can accurately and smoothly simulate 2 millions of nodes at a rate of 650k events/sec on a simple laptop.
