Industrial Robot & Manufacturing Automation

The objective is the development, customization and integration of advanced miniaturized sensors for Digital Manufacturing, focusing on:

• Sensors Principles
• Sensors Network Architecture for loT Application
• Sensors Integration for Digital Twins for Advanced Manufacturing/ 3D Advanced Mapping
• Wearables
  

The objective is the development, customization and demonstration of miniaturized sensors with integrated mechanical and electronic components based on Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) technology for lightweight, compact and high sensitivity aerospace and robotics applications.

The aim is to design and manufacturing of new classes of structured materials with unprecedented capabilities of morphing shape, varying stiffness, sensing, responding to and communicating with their surrounding environment. For example, a 3D printed fabric with tuneable stiffness.

Principal Investigator: Nanyang Assistant Professor Wang Yifan

The aim is to develop additive manufacturing technologies for soft and stimuli response materials, which can be used in robotic sensing and actuation.

Principal Investigator: Nanyang Assistant Professor Wang Yifan

Flexure mechanisms are flexible structures that are designed to deliver desired motions via elastic deformations. Due to their unique actuation, these structures can effectively eliminate backlash and dry friction, allowing them to achieve highly repeatable motions. As a result, flexure mechanisms have become the ideal candidates for constructing high precision robotic systems, and they have been deployed across a wide range of applications pertaining to biomedical research, microscopy technologies and various industrial manufacturing processes.

Principal Investigator: Assistant Professor Lum Guo Zhan

Gallium is a class of liquid metal that can be attached to millimeter-scale robots to enhance their functionality. In our previous research, we discovered that gallium can exhibit highly reversible and switchable adhesion when it undergoes a solid-liquid phase transition. It has been demonstrated that this liquid metal can become highly adhesive when it freezes and it can conversely lose its adhesion when it melts. These adhesive properties had been characterized, and we experimentally show that gallium has good performance over a wide range of smooth and rough surfaces, under both dry and wet conditions. The unique adhesive properties of gallium can therefore allow it to perform various pick-and-place tasks at small-scale, which are critical for numerous applications in transfer printing, robotics, electronic packaging, and biomedicine.

Principal Investigator: Assistant Professor Lum Guo Zhan

Developing robots that can generalise across different embodiments and environments is a fundamental challenge in robotics. This research area explores cross-embodiment transfer learning, enabling knowledge transfer between different robotic platforms, and sim-to-real transfer, bridging the gap between simulated training environments and real-world deployment. By leveraging domain adaptation, reinforcement learning, and self-supervised techniques, the aim is to enhance the adaptability of robotic systems, reducing the need for extensive real-world data collection while improving their performance in unstructured and dynamic environments.

Principal Investigator: Assistant Professor Yang Jianfei

The objective is to develop a Cable-Driven Robot Arm with Low-Inertia Movement and Long-Term Cable Durability, consisting of:

• Hybrid design of cable + rod
• Decoupling mechanism
• Cable tightening mechanism
• 3 degrees of freedom wrist
• Interface to turn on camera and control motor movement

Principal Investigator: Dr Chow Wai Tuck, Senior Lecturer

The objective is to develop a Wearable Stiffness-Rendering Haptic Device with a Honeycomb Jamming Mechanism for Bilateral Teleoperation, consisting of:

• Haptic device - renders object stiffness, using applied force to control gripper's motion and force
• Jamming gripper - particles that become compact upon gripping, resisting movement of gripped object

Principal Investigator: Dr Chow Wai Tuck, Senior Lecturer