Ahmad Khushairy Makhtar

Simulation and performance evaluation of a new type of powered Dynamic Ankle Foot Orthosis

Dynamic Ankle Foot Orthosis (DAFO) is a revolutionary of the Ankle Foot Orthosis, which is an equipment used to control the motion and position of ankles. It is designed to correct deformities for patients who require treatment of disorders related to muscles and nerves functional failure. Unfortunately, the current designs of DAFO are limited only for patients who can move ankles by their own. This drives for new researches with the aim to develop an innovative development of powered DAFO and currently many researches are still in progress. This paper proposes a new type of DAFO model, which was fabricated locally and assesses its design parameters and functions using computer simulation and numerical analyses. The proposed DAFO was modeled in 3-dimensional using SOLIDWORKS 2010 and several simulations and analyses were carried out to evaluate the current design. Finite element analysis was conducted to determine deformation and stress distribution for DAFO made of two types of materials, which are Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and Polypropylene (PP). The failure and factor of safety (FOS) of the proposed model were evaluated under specified boundary conditions and load applied for static and motion condition. Results from this study show that the model functions well and do not fail during testing. The results from the motion analysis show that the DAFO moves according to the design specification. This proves that the material used is the right choice and the current design is acceptable. The current study also proves that computational simulation could be a useful and practical tool in aiding product design. Moreover, it saves time and cost compared to laboratory and destructive testing. Therefore, it can be concluded that the current study has successfully utilized computational analysis and simulation tools in developing the proposed DAFO.

Advanced Autonomous Multirotor Response System

Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in the form of multi-rotor system is having a great potential in various applications such as disaster management (as first response system) and surveillance. It is known that conventional helicopter system, capable of hovering, is practical and reliable as many applications have confirmed its capabilities. However it is only achievable once highly optimized control architecture is realized. The objective of the research presented in this paper is, to develop a small multi rotor UAV system that is able to autonomously flying from one way point to another in a stable manner. This small UAV is termed as Mini (or Micro) Aerial Vehicle (MAV). In this project, a four-rotor system was developed, and becoming the platform of various sensors system, flight control system, and electric propulsion system. The MAV was programmed to be able to lift off and fly to waypoints making use of GPS. This paper presents the architecture of the MAV and its autonomous flight.

Dynamics characterization of a high precision MM3A micro-manipulator system

This paper presents a study on control architecture improvement of a MM3A microrobotic system (MM3A) in terms of high precision capability using a hybrid control strategy viz. PD control scheme integrated with intelligent Active Force Control (AFC) and Fuzzy Logic (FL). The dynamic model of the MM3A is derived using Recursive Newton-Euler method. The simulation was carried out using MATLAB, Simulink. Three control schemes were utilized in this study namely, proportional-derivative (PD) controller, PD-AFC-Crude Approximation, and PD-AFC-Fuzzy Logic estimator in order to test the system performance and robustness. Based on the simulation results, it is proven that the proposed scheme has outstanding performance compared to the classical control scheme. Using AFC-FL strategy, the MM3A was able to achieve its desired performance excellently. Incorporating neural networks into the system tightens the errors and reduces the time taken for the robot to achieve its desired response.

Conceptual Design of the Mechanical Transfer Lift: Through the Application of EDP And KE

The mechanical transfer lift is a device used to assist caretakers when transferring patients from one position to another. While using a manual transfer method, they need to extract a large amount of energy to transfer the patient; resulting in back pain and stress. From the engineering design process, the main objective of this research is to come out with the conceptual design of a transferring device; which is compatible to use in a hospital environment. The design should allow caretakers to transfer a patient with less work as possible, at the same time is easy to handle, portable and ergonomic. The details regarding each design concept have been highlighted and discussed accordingly. In the future, further improvement shall be applied towards the design during the preliminary and detail design stage.

A Study on Effect of Intelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) to Bus Drivers

ntelligent Speed Adaptation (ISA) is a system that constantly monitors vehicle speed, local speed limit on a road and implements an action such as giving warning or discourages the drivers when the vehicle is detected to be exceeding the speed limit. A GPS connected to digital speed map allows Intelligent Speed Adaptation technology to continuously update the vehicle speed limit to the road speed limit. The main purpose of this project is to study the speed profile and effect on drivers psychology on Intelligent Speed Adaptation to bus drivers before and after the intervention of ISA technology. An experiment was conducted on GPS-ISA instrument involving about 20 respondents of Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Shah Alam Campus bus drivers from various backgrounds. The instrument used to collect data is GPS-ISA device. The data gained from GPS-ISA device is speed profile to specify the speeding and speed variation. To evaluate drivers psychology, a set of questionnaire was designed. The data gained from questionnaire are attention level, stress level, and ISA acceptance level. The result of total differences for all 20 respondents between the average speed before and after the intervention for Zone 1 to Zone 5 was-8.95 km/h. For drivers psychology results, most of the respondents are willing to use ISA system if given a chance. Majority of respondents did not felt any stress and distraction while driving by using ISA system. For conclusion, the ISA system proved to be efficiently reduced speed of busses in UiTM Shah Alam campus zone and can be used as an initiative in order to assist bus drivers to reduce speed of vehicles especially in campus zone.

Tactile Slippage Analysis in Optical Three-Axis Tactile Sensor for Robotic Hand

This paper presents experimental results of object handling motions to evaluate tactile slippage sensation in a multi fingered robot arm with optical three-axis tactile sensors installed on its two hands. The optical three-axis tactile sensor is a type of tactile sensor capable of defining normal and shear forces simultaneously. Shear force distribution is used to define slippage sensation in the robot hand system. Based on tactile slippage analysis, a new control algorithm was proposed. To improve performance during object handling motions, analysis of slippage direction is conducted. The control algorithm is classified into two phases: grasp-move-release and grasp-twist motions. Detailed explanations of the control algorithm based on the existing robot arm control system are presented. The experiment is conducted using a bottle cap, and the results reveal good performance of the proposed control algorithm to accomplish the proposed object handling motions.