Ekta Singla

Lower-limb exoskeletons: Research trends and regulatory guidelines in medical and non-medical applications

With the recent progress in personal care robots, interest in wearable exoskeletons has been increasing due to the demand for assistive technologies generally and specifically to meet the concerns in the increasing ageing society. Despite this global trend, research focus has been on load augmentation for soldiers/workers, assisting trauma patients, paraplegics, spinal cord injured persons and for rehabilitation purposes. Barring the military-focused activities, most of the work to date has focused on medical applications. However, there is a need to shift attention towards the growing needs of elderly people, that is, by realizing assistive exoskeletons that can help them to stay independent and maintain a good quality of life. Therefore, the present article covers the rapidly evolving area of wearable exoskeletons in a holistic manner, for both medical and non-medical applications, so that relevant current developments and future issues can be addressed; this includes how the physical assistance/rehabilitation/compensation can be provided to supplement capabilities in a natural manner. Regulatory guidelines, important for realizing new markets for these emerging technologies, are also explored in this work. For these, emerging international safety requirements are presented for non-medical and medical exoskeleton applications, so that the central requirement of close human–robot interactions can be adequately addressed for the intended tasks to be carried out. An example case study on developing and commercializing wearable exoskeletons to help support living activities of healthy elderly persons is presented to highlight the main issues in non-medical mobility exoskeletons. This also paves the way for the potential future trends to use exoskeletons as physical assistant robots, as covered by the recently published safety standard ISO 13482, to help elderly people perform their activities of daily living.

A Framework for Evaluation of Environmental Sustainability in Pharmaceutical Industry

The term sustainability is generating much interest both among organizations and as a research topic. This article focuses on the environmental aspect of sustainability in pharmaceutical industry. The main objective of this paper is to present a framework for evaluation of environmental sustainability of formulated products (dosage forms) in pharmaceutical industry. Indicators used in pharmaceutical industry to evaluate environmental sustainability are also presented. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies undertaken in pharmaceutical sector are explored and a list of these studies is presented in this paper. As part of framework building, each phase of LCA viz. goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation was taken into account. For each of the above-mentioned phases, methods that may be undertaken to quantify the environmental burden caused by formulated pharmaceutical products were prepared based on literature review.

Understanding different stakeholders of sustainable product and service-based systems using genetic algorithm

Abstract Service-oriented approach or a combination of Product-Service System (PSS) is often regarded as more promising to traditional discreet product selling. To have a sustainable product or service, PSS systems must equally satisfy the three stakeholders of sustainability viz. people, planet, and profit generated by the companies. However, this is often not the case as the other stakeholders often ignore interest of the planet, as a stakeholder. Government tax incentives could act as an enabler to mitigate this difference. In this work, we explore this issue by developing methodologies to optimize the needs of various stakeholders. We develop equations to express the three Ps of sustainability to find out appropriate government incentives as tax on people and product-manufacturing companies to make products and services more sustainable, assuming that the taxes collected are utilized in restoring the environment. We use Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm to find the optimized taxes for some possible combinations of sale price and number of units to be manufactured. We take a case and explain the application of this novel methodology for a car manufacturing scenario.

Initial population generation strategy for evolution of planar hybrid manipulators

A strategy for generation of random population of planar hybrid manipulators with specific number of degrees of freedom (dof) is proposed in this paper. For a given number of dof and fixed maximum number of links in use, the possibilities of generating diverse hybrid morphologies is explored. The aim of the work is to randomly generate basic morphologies of hybrid robotic manipulators with specific number of dof, to serve the evolution of an optimal mechanism for a given task using evolutionary algorithms. This paper focuses at the former part of the problem and presents an algorithm for population generation. A concept of Mechanism Assembly Matrix is introduced which helps both for random generation and for representation of the morphologies. Some specific number of cell locations of the proposed matrix are randomly selected and filled with one to represent a corresponding joint. Collectively, these cells represent one morphology. The planar mechanisms obtained from the random generation are successfully matching to the possible solutions for the given number of degrees of freedom.

Realization of task-based designs involving DH parameters: a modular approach

Task-based designs—proven to be successful for constrained environments—may face challenges at prototype development phase. To assist in generalized design and development of task-based serial manipulators for cluttered environments, a parameters-based modular approach is proposed. First, a task-based design strategy for serial manipulators is exhibited, using all the robotic parameters (DH parameters) as variables. The flexibility in robotic parameters enhances the possibility of good designs even for highly cluttered workspaces, but the realization of the resulting complicated designs is challenging. This work is an attempt to develop modular manipulators in correspondence to the task-based designs. The DH parameters-based proposed link modules, with reconfigurable architecture, can be adjusted and assembled to acquire the serial manipulators with designed robotic parameters. To validate the concept, some standardized 3R-configurations have been modelled using the proposed link modules. Case studies are presented on task-based design of robotic manipulators, with six and eight degrees of freedom, for service applications in realistic environments. The selected case studies include the robot design processes for applications of cleaning solar panels, and for the maintenance of the nuclear plants.

Wearable Upper Limb Exoskeletons: Generations, Design Challenges and Task Oriented Synthesis

This paper first summarizes the research work in the active and passive upper limb exoskeleton robotics that have been majorly testified in the area of assistive and rehabilitation robotics. Recent techniques have been classified with respect to the reported generations defined by scientific communities and design challenges have been retrieved out of the discussions. Further, an approach is proposed to follow natural upper limb motion of a human arm, and for this required human motion data is taken using a Kinect sensor. A two degrees-of-freedom wearable manipulator is synthesized for emulating the collected data. Simulations are shown while emulating natural motion of an arm, and a corresponding architectural concept design for an active solution is also presented.

Kinematic modeling of a 7-degree of freedom spatial hybrid manipulator for medical surgery:

The prime objective of this work is to deal with the kinematics of spatial hybrid manipulators. In this direction, in 1955, Denavit and Hartenberg proposed a consistent and concise method, known as D-H parameters method, to deal with kinematics of open serial chains. From literature review, it is found that D-H parameter method is widely used to model manipulators consisting of lower pairs. However, the method leads to ambiguities when applied to closed-loop, tree-like and hybrid manipulators. Furthermore, in the dearth of any direct method to model closed-loop, tree-like and hybrid manipulators, revisions of this method have been proposed from time-to-time by different researchers. One such kind of revision using the concept of dummy frames has successfully been proposed and implemented by the authors on spatial hybrid manipulators. In that work, authors have addressed the orientational inconsistency of the D-H parameter method, restricted to body-attached frames only. In the current work, the condition of body-attached frames is relaxed and spatial frame attachment is considered to derive the kinematic model of a 7-degree of freedom spatial hybrid robotic arm, along with the development of closed-loop constraints. The validation of the new kinematic model has been performed with the help of a prototype of this 7-degree of freedom arm, which is being developed at Council of Scientific & Industrial Research–Central Scientific Instruments Organisation Chandigarh to aid the surgeon during a medical surgical task. Furthermore, the developed kinematic model is used to develop the first column of the Jacobian matrix, which helps in providing the estimate of the tip velocity of the 7-degree of freedom manipulator when the first joint velocity is known.

Adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system–based path planning of 5-degrees-of-freedom spatial manipulator for medical applications:

Over the last few decades, medical-assisted robots have been considered by many researchers, within the research domain of robotics. In this article, a 5-degrees-of-freedom spatial medical manipulator is analyzed for path planning, based on inverse kinematic solutions. Analytical methods have generally employed for finding the inverse kinematic solutions in earlier studies. However, this method is only appreciable in case of closed-form solutions. The unusual joint configurations of considered manipulator result in more complexity to attain the closed-form solutions, analytically. To overcome with shortcomings of analytical method, a non-traditional approach named adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system is proposed under the class of artificial intelligent techniques. This article presents this neuro-fuzzy approach for desired path generation by 5-degrees-of-freedom manipulator. The estimation of percentage error between actual path and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system–generated path is done with respect to x, y, and z directions, respectively. Furthermore, the error between actual and predicted values regarding joint parameters is calculated for a certain arm matrix. The prototype of 5-degrees-of-freedom medical-assisted manipulator is developed at CSIR-CSIO Laboratory Chandigarh, which is also termed as patient-side manipulator to be utilized in robot-assisted surgery. Through the simulation runs, in this work, it is found that the results from adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system approach are quite satisfactory and acceptable.

On the Jacobian computation of planar hybrid manipulators: A unified approach

Utilization of hybrid topology of a robotic manipulator is explored by several researchers — both for planar and spatial mechanisms. The motivation lies in the fact that serially connected links are normally selected for large manipulability and parallel manipulators are utilized for better stiffness. The selection of a hybrid configuration is normally done through some experience and/or through the knowledge based upon previously used linkages. No assistance is available for selection of the basic robotic structure corresponding to a given task, say working locations and payload capacity. An attempt is presented towards a unified approach to compute kinematic performance of planar hybrid manipulators with the links connected in series, in loops and in combinations of both. This paper presents an approach to compute Jacobian for any planar hybrid manipulator in a unified way. It is expected that such an approach will avoid the requirement of separately writing the kinematic model of each hybrid structure and thus assist in evolving basic topology of a hybrid structure.

Modular Robotic Assistance in Cluttered Environments: A Broad-Spectrum of Industrial Applications

A broad perspective is presented for the utilization of modular robotic arms in various industrial tasks, particularly for cluttered environments. Parameters-based modules are proposed to develop reconfigurable manipulators according to the robotic parameters, resulting out of the design procedure. A brief description of the modules divisions and the optimal assembly planning is presented. Focus of the paper is the multi-layered approach for modules inventory, which can be referred as base for the further additions in the types of modules required in the library. A case study on a realistic problem of challenging welding sites is presented as one example of the upper layer of multi-layered spectrum. The results present the designed configurations and corresponding modular assembly.