Seminar: Kinematic Principles for Design of Nano, Micro and Macro Mechanical Systems

Abstract

In this talk, I will present how the kinematics and mechanism theories are applied to design of mechanical systems ranging from nanometer scale robots made of DNA materials to macroscopic mobile and collaborative robots. I will start with presenting an overview of my research interests and several past and current projects from Design Innovation and Simulation Laboratory (DISL). Then I will focus on two particular projects. The first one is about applying kinematic principles to the design of nanometer scale mechanisms using the emerging DNA origami nanotechnology which is a self-assembly process for design and fabrication of complex 3D nanostructures using DNA as functional materials. We have demonstrated this method by designing and physically fabricating a series of nanoscale classic kinematic joints such as revolute, prismatic, cylindrical, universal and spherical joints as well as several representative mechanisms including Bennett 4-bar, crank-slider and compliant bistable mechanisms etc. This work lays out the foundation for DNA nanorobots that may be applied to numerous applications such as drug delivery, precision medicine. The second project focuses on human-safe corobots. Corobots or cobots are robotic devices designed to work side by side with human worker. However, one major concern of corobots is safety. In particular, I will show how compliant mechanisms can be designed and optimized for the best trade-off of performance (speed and positioning accuracy) and safety for corobots. More specifically, I will present how intentionally introducing compliance to a robotic arm reduces injury during a potential impact of the arm with human operator. The use of pseudo-rigid-body model for kinetostatic and dynamic modeling of compliant robotic arms will also be presented.

About the Speaker

Haijun Su is an Associate Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at The Ohio State University. Su received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Irvine in 2004. He received many awards including the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award in 2009, the Compliant Mechanism Theory best paper award in 2009 and in 2014, Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship and ASME M&R Freudenstein/GM Young Investigator award in 2010, Lumley Research Award in 2015, the MSC Software Simulation paper award in 2002, the finalists of Mechanism and Robotics best paper award in 2005, Su served as the conference chair of 2016 ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Conference, the industry relation chair of the 2010 ASME IDETC/CIE and the publication chair of the 2015 ASME IDETC/CIE. He is currently an associate editor of ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics and Mechanism and Machine Theory. He was elected as a Fellow of ASME in 2017.