ABSTRACT
Additive manufacturing is the main approach to fabricate freeform and complex shapes specifically when there is a time limit for the production of a part. Manufacturing complex shapes and highly customizable products in a short time is crucial especially during catastrophic events such as earthquakes, hurricanes and even pandemics in which having a mechanical part is vital to save human lives. An internal or external circular geometry is among the main manufacturing shapes that can be seen in many industrial parts which are mainly used as a joint between the components. In this paper, a methodology is presented to minimize the difference between the minimum circumscribed and the maximum inscribed circles constructing a circular feature of a pneumatic valve. The main purpose of this research is to improve the feasibility of using Additive Manufacturing methods in terms of dimensional accuracy to manufacture parts promptly and without the need for a post-processing operation. Copyright (C) 2021 The Authors.
ABSTRACT
Due to the sever circumstances in the global pandemic, there has been an immense need for disinfectant robot technology. This pandemic has made people much more aware about the severity of virus transmission in public areas. This prompts society to be much more aware of the need to maintain a clean environment. The purpose of this paper is to present the design principles of an Autonomous Indoor Cleaning Robot (AICR) developed to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in indoor environments such as small shops and office settings. Its main purpose is to proactively disinfect the air and maintain a clean breathing environment by actively targeting populated areas with the use of a vision system, using Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (VSLAM) technology. Currently there are other air disinfection products on the market also making use of a combination of a High-Efficiency Particulate Absorbing (HEPA) air purifier and Ultra Violet (UV) light to kill airborne viruses like the Coronavirus. However, all of these are stationary with lack of intelligence machines that have to be kept or manually wheeled from room to room. The device proposed in the paper is a fully autonomous air purifying device capable of going to certain critical regions of the indoor environment to disinfect the air in that area without any human interaction. The stationary purifiers should be much more powerful covering a larger area which makes them very expensive. In contrast, the developed autonomous air purifier needs much less power consumption compared to static purifiers, with the advantage of intelligently and dynamically learning the status of the room using the information captured from the occupancy, itself, and the environment. © 2021 IEEE
ABSTRACT
COVID-19 has become a major outbreak cross the world with millions of cases. The spread of virus is rising exponentially and the entire world is in a state of emergency. A considerable percentage of the patients require intensive care unit (ICU) and mechanical ventilation. As it was anticipated, there has been shortages of mechanical ventilators in the health care sectors of various countries. Developing Rapidly Manufacturable Ventilators (RMV) has been the objective of this project to address this demand. Additive Manufacturing, as a universal manufacturing technology could be considered to produce the components of ventilators. However, the typical poor quality of the 3D printed surfaces potentially doesn't comply with the required tight tolerances in fabrication of pneumatic valves employed in a mechanical ventilator. This paper described an approach to overcome this issue. © 2020 IEEE.