Final Paper

It's a little late, but here is the final paper from my work this summer.  I had a great time learning about hydraulics as well as the research process.  Feel free to contact me (rfisher@purdue.edu) if you have any questions!

Thanks again for a great summer.

Final Paper

Woops!

Well I forgot to do the final blog. Everything ended up going ok at the end. Had a lot of work to do the last 3 days, but hopefully this work will be useful in the future. It turns out that opening and closing 3/2way valves at high pressure wastes a lot of energy. Also recycling high pressure exhausted air to power low pressure applications saves a lot of energy. It was a fun summer! Hope you guys enjoyed it too.
Megan

Not finished, but here goes!

Hey everyone!
So the REU program is finally over, but my research isn't! Below I attached a very very short slideshow of stuff I'm working on as the temporary "final" deliverable. Unfortunately, I am unable to share in depth details about my project due to a non disclosure agreement! However, the slideshow consists of what I am allowed to currently show. Since my REU program was hosted by my home institution, I will still continue to work on this project throughout the fall semester, and when the project finally becomes patented and when the graduate student I work with finishes and submits her paper, I will be able to share more (particularly about the interior and design process) and submit my paper.

Mini Presentation

Progress: Currently the prototype is at it's final steps of manufacturing and once completed, it will go through preliminary testing before it is actually tested in the hydraulic rig. (That way if there are leaks, it's caught before it's tested in the actual rig, which would cause a big mess) Once it's safe, it will be tested in the hydraulic rig and data will be collected and primarily analyzed by the graduate student.

I hope to get it done ASAP so I can share it with you all!

-Daniel

Final Presentation!!!

All, I had a lot of fun learning this summer, unfortunately it has come to an end. I want to thank everyone that made this summer great and my fellow colleagues. It was a pleasure meeting everyone at Purdue Univ. This is a link to my presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/ekundayo/research-2012a?from=share_email Well enjoy!

Final day pt. 1

This video shows what Augmented reality is about, which is what my summer consisted of researching about.

The end of the beginning

Greetings all!

Hope everyone enjoyed their experiences in the new cities (for most that traveled from their hometown) as much as their research. As the final 48 hours are whittling down, I wanted to express some sentiments in regards to the REU program, in general. After a week in, I had joked with another REU participant at MSOE (there were 9 REU participants total at MSOE: 2 CCEFP and 7 related with rapid prototyping) saying that this was like having won a game show: a paid trip, cash prizes (albeit having to work for it, but nonetheless), and the occasional free meals. However, the most invaluable part of "winning", being chosen for this program, is the experience. I had not given research much as an afterthought and the experienced convinced me and opened up new perspectives for the future. Ultimately, it also pushed my gears towards preparing for graduate school. The skills and techniques that were developed through these past 10 weeks cannot be taught anywhere else. I am truly grateful for being part of the 2012 CCEFP REU program.

A flurry of events occurred since my last post, mostly related with deadlines. We've had a final presentation last week, poster session yesterday, and I'm awaiting revisions and approval from my adviser on my final research paper. Without further ado, here are my final deliverables for the program:

Final presentation: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r23jz8j18do3ir2/Young%20Presentation.pdf

Final poster: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9t47g75fly1sqmh/Young%20Poster.pdf

Final paper: https://www.dropbox.com/s/73cukgrfapwu8pk/Young%20-%20Final%20Paper.pdf

I will refrain from talking about my project; the technicalities as well as basics are in the paper and poster, respectively, so please check it out! It was definitely exciting to learn about thermoelectric generators, much more than what I knew from Week 1 (absolutely nothing). While it wasn't inherently a fluid power focused project (no hydraulics or pneumatics involved), its impact in the increasingly expanding fluid power industry is immeasurable. One thing I should have prepared myself for was programming, MATLAB in general; the relevance would have incredibly helped with the system modeling and mapping out the characteristics for optimization.

It's been quite a festive time in Milwaukee. I'm not sure when I'll be back, but I made sure I got to squeeze as much of the experience that I could as time permitted. On a final note, here's a completely unrelated quote to keep in mind about my research journey: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." - Winston Churchill

Final Presentation

Hi everyone,

Well, as I stated before, I'm working with the development of a human-machine interface for excavators. The haptic interface intends to add tactile cues to the traditionally operated excavator, which uses mainly visual and auditory cues. The goal of the experiment was to assess the stability of the haptic system and the potential improvements that it can bring to the operation in terms of productivity. The following link takes you to the final my final presentation (on Prezi website), which shows the development of the research, the results and conclusions.

Final Presentation

If you have questions or suggestions, don't hesitate to contact me.

Thank you!

Enio.

Greetings from GA

Hello everyone!!!

Everything is going pretty well here! I got my energy harvester prototype machined, and after a few more adjustments, it should be ready for preliminary testing. Other than that, it's been somewhat hectic writing a paper about my prototype for my professor, and slowly working on the report/poster for the CCEFP deliverable, while also trying to finish up the actual prototype. But nonetheless, everything's been pretty good here at GA Tech (minus today's rainy weather).

Interesting/unrelated news: They're actually currently shooting the movie "The Internship" here on GA Tech campus! They altered a lot of the buildings to make it look like Google headquarters and apparently Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson have been walking around campus, although I've never ran into either of them.

-Daniel Kim

Crane Update

With the help of my graduate mentor, I recently replaced the over center valves on the crane.  The new valves have two important features.  The first is that they have twice the pilot ratio of the old valves (and the valves that are typically in use in the field).  This basically means that the new valves are lot more efficient, but possibly more unstable.  The second advantage of the new valves is that we can adjust the pressure that is required to open them.  Lowering the pressure means less energy is needed, but again may lead to instabilities.  My graduate mentor is developing a pressure feedback controller as part of his thesis so we can make the valves much more energy efficient while making sure the system stays stable.  We have not operated the crane since the valve replacement, so we're hoping everything goes well once we turn the pump on...

Based on the theoretical performance of the new valves, I was able to calculate that we could achieve upwards of 40% energy savings over the old valves.  This depends heavily on the load that is on the crane and what cycle the crane is put through, but we are still very happy with the energy savings that could be realized if the controller can be developed to keep the crane stable.

This is our last week of the program here at Purdue, so now a lot of my time is spent finishing up presentations and paper.  The REU program this summer was a great experience and I hope everyone else enjoyed it as much as I did!

Hello Again

Hi Everyone!

I hope you are all enjoying the last few weeks that we have left with CCEFP. I can’t believe time has gone by so fast! Since my last blog post, I have built the majority of my Simulink model for my hydro-mechanical wind turbine. In fact, I pressed ‘run’ for the very first time on Monday morning. However, with the push of that button I began the frustrating task of debugging… inevitably, this week is going to be a long one.

Nevertheless, I do have a fun tale to tell about last week. On Tuesday, I went with fellow summer researchers to visit the University of Minnesota’s Morris campus. On this campus there are two large wind turbines, a biomass-burning plant, and a silver LEED certified building which heats its rooms and water with mostly solar thermal energy. The entire tour was led by three wonderfully knowledgeable speakers, and was extremely motivational.  Seeing how the campus incorporated all of these state-of-the-art, sustainable technologies, renewed my faith in America’s green energy sector! I really cannot wait for more of these products to find their way into modern homes and communities.

If you ever find yourself out in Minnesota, make sure you take a day and visit the Morris campus. It is definitely worth the drive!      

Hi everyone!

So this week was exciting because we had a TB6 conference call and Becca, Ellen and I were all there! I am finally starting to get a good direction for my project since I stopped being asked to do other tasks. The process has been really interesting trying to breakdown what is useful for us to do and what would be useful to do for a paper (the community's use).

Hope everyone's having a good time!
Megan

Power steering system update

In our project, the primary concern is related to the articulated steering structure. Articulated steering is actually rotating the whole front frame which requires a significant steering torque. However, The steering wheel is connected to the proportional rotary valve directly. That means considerable energy loss will occur at the valve.

In order to reduce the energy consumption, we will implement the DC system. However, haptic feedback won’t be available in this case, because the steering wheel no longer has a direct linkage with the steering cylinder. So we will use a sensor to measure the steering wheel position and a torque feedback device to replicate the road feel. A controller will be used to communicate the hydraulic pump and steering interface. 

In general, we will have improvements in 3 aspects: efficiency, safety and productivity

A lot of work has demonstrated the improved efficiency of the displacement controlled actuation by getting rid of the throttling loss across the valve. Next, stability is normally an issue for articulated steering vehicle, like jackknifing or snaking. However, with the new system, the active steering assistance can modify the driver’s input to stabilize the vehicle. We will also use progressive steering to help driver be more productive. That means in low speed situation, driver will experience faster and easier steering than that in high speed, in which case the resistive force will increase for better stability.

Haptic Devices

Hello everyone,

I hope each and everyone of you are enjoying your time thus far. For the past couple of weeks, I have been working on two haptic devices. The 1st was the Phantom Omni; which I tried to test but did not work out as planned. The Phantom Omni is a haptic devices makes it possible for users to touch and manipulate virtual objects. Due to some technical difficulty, I could not use it as I wanted to. Though we are still using the 2nd haptic device. The 2nd haptic device is the Phantom Premium 1.5 which provides a range of motion approximating lower arm movement pivoting at the elbow. Those in industry believe this haptic device to be better than the Phantom Omni.

The Premium 1.5 device includes a passive stylus and thimble gimbal and provides 3 degrees of freedom positional sensing and 3 degrees of freedom force feedback. Since it has been connected, I mainly just played with it using the graphic excavator and loading and unloading sand. While the Phantom Omni provides six degree-of-freedom positional sensing, Portable design and compact footprint for workplace flexibility, Comfortable molded-rubber stylus with textured paint for long term use and secure grip, removable stylus for end-user customization and two integrated momentary switches on the stylus for ease-of-use, and end-user customization.

Until next time, Stay Up!!!!

Hi everyone! In these past few days, we ran the pilot test to study the usability of a prototype interface for fluid powered rescue robots. The experiment consisted on the participants running two interfaces (the previous one, and the new one, with the changes suggested in our first study). Their eye movements were recorded, and the data collected was compared to analyze if we were able to improve the usability of the interface. Good results have been achieved, and now we will probably run the real experiment.

Long overdue update

Hello all! Hope everyone is doing well, as we are past the halfway mark and these 10 weeks are coming to a close (it seemed not that long ago since we all met at Purdue, wasn't it?)

Anyhoo, for the past few weeks, I've just been getting myself more acquainted with the research material: thermoelectric generators (TEG's), their theory, performance, and applications. My project has now been geared towards improving and perfecting upon the system modeling that was done the previous year using MATLAB (had to dust off my notes and refresh on that). I've done lots of literature survey regarding modeling, including system, mathematical, and simulation modeling. I will be receiving aid by a graduate student and hopefully get something running in the next few days. If time permits, I will be experimentally testing a commercially available TEG and comparing it to the system model for validity.

Essentially, as noted in the previous blog post, the application for the TEG in fluid power systems will be implemented in Test Bed 6 (ankle foot orthosis) and for greater scales, Test Bed 3 (hydraulic hybrid passenger vehicle). TEG's will utilize the waste heat from the engines and converting it to usable electric energy to power on small devices (batteries, valves, control circuitry) due to their minimal power output.

The research has been exciting, as its new to me and its potential is remarkable. I was able to test out an evaluation kit that was used from last year's and the phenomenon of thermoelectricity was fascinating. As time is quickly running out, I will be working extra hard to at least complete the system modeling to gain knowledge about the system characteristics for future optimization. 

Haptic Excavator

Hi everybody,

As I stated on my previous post, I'm working on a project for a multimodal excavator. The purpose of this project is to replace the traditional control for a different joystick which allows the operator to have tactile cues, such as feeling pressure, vibration, and also to provide a more intuitive interface, improving the productivity of the operation. I'll post a video showing the device later, but today I'll talk about what I've been doing so far. Over the past weeks my mission has been to revise a mathematical model for the haptic control and for the traditional control. This model includes transfer functions representing the cues (visual, auditory and haptic), the neuromuscular system, force generator, central nervous and task dynamics systems. By combining all these functions, it is possible to come up with a equation of the operator-excavator model. Once I have the equation, I can plug into Matlab and generate some plots to evaluate the systems using some parameters such as stability. Currently, I'm plotting the charts on Matlab and making this evaluations.

I hope everybody is enjoying the experience.

Enio Frota.

Maha Crane

Hello everyone.  My project has switched gears recently.  Originally, I was working on analyzing the load holding valves on the hydraulic crane installed at Maha.  I was able to run tests on the valves that came with the crane and would represent that technology that is currently in the field.  The next step is to replace the valves with new, state of the art valves that were donated to us and run the same tests.  In this way, I could quantify how energy efficient/inefficient the current valves are and how much could be saved with new valves and a closed loop controller.  Recently though, I've been working on improving the simulation for the crane.  Specifically, I'm working on improving the kinematic model.  To do that, I've made the entire crane in Solidworks and then imported the model into MATLAB's SimMechanics.  The current challenge is getting SimMechanics to talk to AMESim (where the fluid model was made), so we can simulate the entire system.  The goal is to validate this model so in the future, they can more easily test different control techniques.

Hi!
So the most exciting thing that happened last week was a lab field trip up to Chicago. We got toured around the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and learned about all the prosthetic and orthotic research they are doing up there. There is a lot of cool stuff they can test by tethering to able-bodied people so that the device can be tested on them first. And we saw an exoskeleton!! So the future of bionic suits is not far away :) once they become a little more stable...
Have a great week!
Megan

Hi everyone! In these past few days I have been working on the development of the new prototype interface for a fluid power rescue robot. Based on the data collected on the Tobii machine on the previous experiment that we ran, some suggestions to address the usability issues were implemented. Also, external research was conducted to gather data from usability studies to create a more user-friendly interface. Now, a new experiment will be conducted in the new interface, to make a comparison and see if our goal was achieved.

Hello everyone! The past few weeks, I helped fellow grad students with their projects. I helped them test their noise suppressors in the fluid power oil rig we work on. On top of helping grad students, I am still designing my project, and modeling it using Autodesk Inventor. I am currently trying to optimize the device and trying to make it plausible for the machine shop to machine. Once it's ready, I should have a test ready prototype by the end of July. Other than that, I learned a lot of basic fluid power, acoustics, and even machine design while working on my project.