MRI: Acquisition of a Lightweight 7-Axis Robotic Manipulator with Force Sensing for Archaeological and Engineering Research and Education

这一重大研究仪器(MRI)奖支持购买7轴机械臂进行多学科研究。这种机械臂将支持几个需要复杂和重复运动的研究项目。例如，这一仪器将使复杂的考古和工程实验成为可能。对于考古研究，机器人手臂将用石头和骨骼工具复制古代任务。当执行刮削和切割等任务时，这些动作的痕迹会在工具表面形成。将复制品工具上的磨损模式与文物上的痕迹进行比较，研究人员可以解释史前人类可能是如何使用这些工具的。与运动受限的测试夹具不同，机械臂更接近于模仿人类的动作，从而更好地理解古代生活。在工程中，这个机器人将被用来研究当金属管被来回弯曲成新的形状时，例如当连续的管子被压下直井筒时，金属管壁会发生什么。这将有助于预测油管何时破裂，提高安全性和防止环境灾难。这种机器人手臂还有望用于其他各种科学努力，包括如何用机器人手抓取和移动物体，使机器人在工业和面向人类的应用中更有用。最后，机器人将被用来吸引和教育学生、游客和更广泛的公众。该机器人将用于对石头和骨骼工具进行考古使用磨损研究，这可以与使用变焦显微镜和成像共聚焦显微镜对考古文物进行比较。至关重要的是，机器人可以模仿人类运动的可变性，同时还可以提供由这些运动产生的定量、可复制的数据。在工程上，机器人将被用来研究一种名为“Raching”的现象，这种现象发生在金属管发生大变形时。机器人将能够产生与这种现象相关的复杂弯曲轨迹，这是现有测试机难以执行的。最后，机器人将被用来研究当握住物体的手从不同方向接近时被抓取的物体与环境的交互，以及生成复杂的移动约束曲面，以实验研究软机器人与其环境的交互。总体而言，机械臂将产生推进这些多学科研究项目所需的复杂轨迹。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award supports the acquisition of a 7-axis robotic arm for multidisciplinary research. This robotic arm will enable several research projects requiring complex and repetitive motions. For example, this instrument will enable sophisticated archaeological and engineering experiments. For archaeological research, the robot arm will replicate ancient tasks with stone and bone tools. When performing tasks such as scraping and cutting, traces of these actions develop on the surface of the tool. Comparing the wear patterns on replica tools with traces on artifacts, researchers can interpret how prehistoric people may have used these tools. Unlike a test fixture with limited motions, the robotic arm more closely mimics human movements leading to better understanding of life in the ancient past. Within engineering, this robot will be used to study what occurs in the walls of metal tubes when they are bent back and forth into new shapes numerous times, such as when a coiled tube is forced down a straight well-bore. This will aid in predicting when the tubing will rupture, improving safety and preventing environmental catastrophe. This robot arm is also expected to be used in a variety of other scientific endeavors, including how to grasp and move objects with robot hands so that robots are more useful in industry and human-facing applications. Finally, the robot will be used to engage and educate students, visitors, and the broader public. The robot will be used to perform archaeological use-wear studies on stone and bone tools, which can be compared to those on archaeological artifacts using focus-variation microscopy and imaging confocal microscopy. Crucially, the robot can mimic the variability of human motions while also providing quantitative, replicable data produced by those motions. For engineering, the robot will used to study a phenomenon called “rachetting”, which occurs when metal tubing is subject to large deformations. The robot will be able to generate the complex bending trajectories that have been associated with this phenomenon, which is difficult to perform with existing testing machines. Finally, the robot will be used to study the interaction of grasped objects with the environment as the hand holding the object approaches from various directions, as well as to generate complex, moving constraint surfaces to experimentally study the interaction of soft robots with their environment. Overall, the robotic arm will produce the complex trajectories needed to advance these multidisciplinary research projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.