1. Analysis and Design of Planar Spring for Surgical Robot

Planar spring is one type of compact spring that generates motions based on the deformation of the flexure elements, and it has been widely used in the control of industrial valves, developing drive clutches and force sensor structures. It also has great potential in developing compliant robotics, such as compliant robotic fingers and continuum manipulators. Different tasks require different compliance characteristics of planar springs, including linear compliance characteristics and angular compliance characteristics. For example, in the control of valves, flexure elements are preferred to generate out-of-plane linear deformation, and diminish in-plane linear deformation and any angular rotation; However, in the design of continuum manipulators, flexure elements are required to have enough bending compliance and diminish torsional compliance and any linear compliance.

Previous work has been focusing on developing analytical models of planar spring’s compliance matrix. By introducing symbolic calculation, symbolic representations of both linear and angular compliance elements are developed, which show the compliance characteristics of planar springs are affected by the assemble parameter and the shape parameters of flexure elements, also the relationships between compliance elements and each design parameters are explored, which leads to new designs of planar spring.

However, the analytical model depends on the linear deformation assumptions of flexure elements, which indicates the accuracy of analytical models need to be considered and examined with experiment tests.

The main goal of the MSc project is to develop experiment setup to exam the compliance characteristics of planar springs following the analytical models, and further decide the maximum deformation (or payload) of planar spring with different structures.

2. Developing New Reconfigurable and Metamorphic Robots

If you are interested in linkages or mechanisms for developing robots which drive toys, bicycles and typewriters or any other machines, this will be a good project for you to open your horizon into a realm of linkages and mechanisms for robotic applications. You need creative ideas of constructing new mechanisms (linkages) using LEGO blocks or using any other blocks. You need to have the lectures on kinematics and dynamics of mechanisms for you to carry out the design and creative work to produce new linkages for production or daily life automation. Another route of creating this new type of mechanisms is to extract any imaginative mechanisms from paper folding or origami folding by taking crease lines as joints and paper panels as links. The project gives a huge potential for creativity by associating mechanisms (linkages) with origami and with toy mechanisms.

3. Rehabilitation Robot for Ankle Injuries Based on Metamorphic Parallel Mechanisms

Combining the knowledge of mechatronics devices with mechanisms and with parallel robot, this project provides a good practice and interesting experience. The project is based on a previous design and is to improve the design by carrying out the motion analysis and dynamic modeling of metamorphic parallel mechanisms. A mathematical model is to be developed and a simulation is to be implemented in the second stage of the project. The project will contribute in a great deal to those who love either a piece of computing work or mathematics analysis, and to those who love some design work or to those who love to combine the academic knowledge with practical implementations. The parallel device produced from this project will have potentiality to be used in medical application including for recovering from sport injuries.

4. Improved Design of a Multi-fingered Metamorphic Robot Hand for a Prosthetic Hand for Disability

The multi-fingered metamorphic robot hand have been developed at KCL in the past eight years. This project is to design the underactuated structure for the current version of metamorphic hand in which only three actuators are expected to be used for driving the metamorphic hand to realize the grasping of the daily objects. This

requires the knowledge of kinematics and geometry and will need to read literature of tendon-driven scheme. The project further request a preliminary control for the prosthetic hand by developing both hardware and software based on the current anthropomorphic hand in the Lab. Substantial control experience is required particular those students who can use either PCI control, USB control or parallel/serial port control or Labview.

This is an interesting project based on the worldwide novel robotic hand but mechatronics skills as well as essential control-system development experience are required.

5. Control of a Multi-fingered Metamorphic Robot Hand

A multi-fingered metamorphic robot hand has been developed at KCL in the past eight years and has been patented. This project is to set up the control interface based on Labview for controlling two motors for a reconfigurable robot palm and the other nine motors for four fingers. This project is to implement the multi-axis control of the metamorphic hand. Substantial control experience is required particular those students who can use either PCI control, USB control or parallel/serial port control or Labview.

This is an interesting project based on the worldwide novel robotic hand but mechatronics skills as well as essential control-system development experience are required.

6. Design and Development of a Four-legged Walking Robot with Reconfigurable Body

The project is to use the concept of configurability to the design of walking robot leading to the design of a walking robot with a reconfigurable body which can help providing more walking gait that enable the walking robot to walk on various surface and environments. An existing design can be provided as a reference and a new design need to be carried out in this project in the first stage of this project. The second stage of the project is to implement the walking gait of the robot for different movement of the robot. Preliminary control knowledge is requested in this project for making the walking robot to realize its basic motion.

7. Mathematical Modelling, Simulation and Design of a Novel Polyhedral Robots and Devices

Polyhedral Robots and Devices have wide applications in the fields of space exploration, architecture, manufacturing and molecule investigation. They demonstrate the fantastic features of reconfigurability and deployability. There are numerous polyhedrons including those regular and semi-regular polyhedrons such as the Platonic polyhedrons, the Archimedean polyhedrons and Johnson polyhedrons. The aim of this project is to develop novel polyhedral robots and devices based on those polyhedrons by using the principle of metamorphism and group theory for symmetry. Substantial mathematics in linear algebra and geometry, as well as in basic group theory is to be used in the modelling and simulation of the novel polyhedral robots and device. Prototypes of the novel robots and devices are also expected if the students are good at design and prototype development.