3D printing for soft robotics – a review

Soft robots have received an increasing attention due to their advantages of high flexibility and safety for human operators but the fabrication is a challenge. Recently, 3D printing has been used as a key technology to fabricate soft robots because of high quality and printing multiple materials at the same time. Functional soft materials are particularly well suited for soft robotics due to a wide range of stimulants and sensitive demonstration of large deformations, high motion complexities and varied multi-functionalities. This review comprises a detailed survey of 3D printing in soft robotics. The development of key 3D printing technologies and new materials along with composites for soft robotic applications is investigated. A brief summary of 3D-printed soft devices suitable for medical to industrial applications is also included. The growing research on both 3D printing and soft robotics needs a summary of the major reported studies and the authors believe that this review article serves the purpose.     

New feature selection algorithms for no-reference image quality assessment

No reference image quality assessment (NR-IQA) is a challenging task since reference images are usually unavailable in real world scenarios. The performance of NR-IQA techniques is vastly dependent on the features utilized to predict the image quality. Many NR-IQA techniques have been proposed that extract features in different domains like spatial, discrete cosine transform and wavelet transform. These NR-IQA techniques have the possibility to contain redundant features, which result in degradation of quality score prediction. Recently impact of general purpose feature selection algorithms on NR-IQA techniques has shown promising results. But these feature selection algorithms have the tendency to select irrelevant features and discard relevant features. This paper presents fifteen new feature selection algorithms specifically designed for NR-IQA, which are based on Spearman rank ordered correlation constant (SROCC), linear correlation constant (LCC), Kendall correlation constant (KCC) and root mean squared error (RMSE). The proposed feature selection algorithms are applied on the extracted features of existing NR-IQA techniques. Support vector regression (SVR) is then applied to selected features to predict the image quality score. The fifteen newly proposed feature selection algorithms are evaluated using eight different NR-IQA techniques over three commonly used image quality assessment databases. Experimental results show that the proposed feature selection algorithms not only reduce the number of features but also improve the performance of NR-IQA techniques. Moreover, features selection algorithms based on SROCC and its combination with LCC, KCC and RMSE perform better in comparison to other proposed algorithms.     

Effective resistance calculation and automated solution for fixing reliability verification violations

Microsystem Technologies - This paper covers the automation done to upgrade the reliability verification in the backend circuit design of microchips. Automation is done to upgrade the reduction of...     

Design and development of a clip building block system for MEMS

Microsystem Technologies - This paper describes the design and development of a clip building block system for Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). The system should allow MEMS applications to...     

Analysis of harmonic contents of switching waveforms emitted by the ultra high speed digital CMOS integrated circuits for use in future micro/nano systems applications

Microsystem Technologies - In this paper we outline the influence of transistor model quality and input signal on the estimates of higher order harmonic contents of switching waveforms emitted by...     

No-reference image quality assessment using gradient magnitude and wiener filtered wavelet features

Multimedia Tools and Applications - No-reference image quality assessment (NR-IQA) aims to evaluate the perceived quality of distorted images without prior knowledge of pristine version of the...     

Development of specific cutting energy map for sustainable turning: a study of Al 6061 T6 from conventional to high cutting speeds

This study presents the development of a novel Specific Cutting Energy (SCE) based process map for turning of Al 6061 T6 alloy from conventional to high-sp