Design and Control of Robotic Hands

The application of dexterous robotic hands out of research laboratories has been limited by the intrinsic complexity that these devices present. This is directly reflected as an economically unreasonable cost and a low overall reliability. Within the research reported in this thesis it is shown how the problem of complexity in the design of robotic hands can be tackled, taking advantage of modern technologies (i.e. rapid prototyping), leading to innovative concepts for the design of the mechanical structure, the actuation and sensory systems. The solutions adopted drastically reduce the prototyping and production costs and increase the reliability, reducing the number of parts required and averaging their single reliability factors. In order to get guidelines for the design process, the problem of robotic grasp and manipulation by a dual arm/hand system has been reviewed. In this way, the requirements that should be fulfilled at hardware level to guarantee successful execution of the task has been highlighted. The contribution of this research from the manipulation planning side focuses on the redundancy resolution that arise in the execution of the task in a dexterous arm/hand system. In literature the problem of coordination of arm and hand during manipulation of an object has been widely analyzed in theory but often experimentally demonstrated in simplified robotic setup. Our aim is to cover the lack in the study of this topic and experimentally evaluate it in a complex system as a anthropomorphic arm hand system.

Design and Characterization of Luminescent Silica Nanoparticles

The aim of this thesis was to design, synthesize and characterize dye-doped silica nanoparticles (DDSNPs) to be used as chemosensors or labels in bioanalytical applications. DDSNPs represent one of the most versatile and useful components in nanomedicine displaying important features such as high colloid stability in water, low toxicity, one-pot inexpensive synthesis and tunable fluorescence emission. Starting from the one-pot and highly reproducible synthesis of “silica-core/PEG shell” DDSNPs based on the use of micelles of Pluronic F127, in which take place both hydrolysis and condensation of the silica precursor and of the dyes functionalized with a triethoxysilane group, we developed DDSNPs suitable for optical and optoacustic imaging, drug loading and chemical sensing obtaining very interesting results for the further development of nanomedicine.

Design and Prototyping High Endurance Multi-Rotor

The topic of this thesis fo cus on the preliminary design and the p erformance analysis of a multirotor platform. A multirotor is an electrically p owered Vertical Take Off (VTOL) machine with more than two rotors that lift and control the platform. Multirotor are agile, compact and robust, making them ideally suited for b oth indo or and outdo or application especially to carry-on several sensors like electro optical multisp ectral sensor or gas sensor. The main disadvantage is the limited endurance due to heavy Li-Po batteries and high disk loading through the use of different small prop ellers. At the same time, the design of the multirotor do es not follow any engineering principle but it follow the ideas of amateurs’ builder. An adaptation of the classic airplane design theory for the preliminary design is implemented to fill the gap and detailed study of the endurance is p erformed to define the right way to make this kind of VTOL platforms.