Hybrid-Driven Origami Gripper with Variable Stiffness and Finger Length.

Soft grippers due to their highly compliant material and self-adaptive structures attract more attention to safe and versatile grasping tasks compared to traditional rigid grippers. However, those flexible characteristics limit the strength and the manipulation capacity of soft grippers. In this paper, we introduce a hybrid-driven gripper design utilizing origami finger structures, to offer adjustable finger stiffness and variable grasping range. This gripper is actuated via pneumatic and cables, which allows the origami structure to be controlled precisely for contraction and extension, thus achieving different finger lengths and stiffness by adjusting the cable lengths and the input pressure. A kinematic model of the origami finger is further developed, enabling precise control of its bending angle for effective grasping of diverse objects and facilitating in-hand manipulation. Our proposed design method enriches the field of soft grippers, offering a simple yet effective approach to achieve safe, powerful, and highly adaptive grasping and in-hand manipulation capabilities.

Cellular automata-based systematic risk analysis approach for emergency response.

Emergency response is directly related to the allocation of emergency rescue resources. Efficient emergency response can reduce loss of life and property, limit damage from the primary impact, and minimize damage from derivative impacts. An appropriate risk analysis approach in the event of accidents is one rational way to assist emergency response. In this article, a cellular automata-based systematic approach for conducting risk analysis in emergency response is presented. Three general rules, i.e., diffusive effect, transporting effect, and dissipative effect, are developed to implement cellular automata transition function. The approach takes multiple social factors such as population density and population sensitivity into consideration and it also considers risk of domino accidents that are increasing due to increasing congestion in industrial complexes of a city and increasing density of human population. In addition, two risk indices, i.e., individual risk and aggregated weighted risk, are proposed to assist decision making for emergency managers during emergency response. Individual risk can be useful to plan evacuation strategies, while aggregated weighted risk can help emergency managers to allocate rescue resources rationally according to the degree of danger in each vulnerable area and optimize emergency response programs.

From Multicomponent precursor to nanoparticle nanoribbons of ZnO.

A simple mild solution method is developed to synthesize a novel nanoribbon multicomponent precursor. A new 1-D nanostructure, porous structured nanoribbons which are self-assembled by textured ZnO nanoparticles, was found upon removal of ligand molecules from the ribbonlike precursor. The structure combines 1-dimensional geometry with nanoparticle morphology and displays porous structure because there are gaps/pores between the particles. The orientation textured structure of the ZnO nanoparticles can be formed by controlling the annealing time. The ZnO nanoparticle nanoribbons exhibit a long geometrical shape, uniformity, a high aspect ratio, and different optical activities with different nanostuctures. These findings demonstrate a convenient, simple technique for production of the novel one-dimensional semiconductor nanostructure suitable for subsequent processing into nanostructures, materials, and devices.