关键词： 机器人工程   机器人大赛   机器人竞赛   本科院校   人才培养   国际型   东南大学   集大成  

摘要： 近年来,我国众多高校在各类机器人竞赛中取得了优异成绩,并多次在国际型机器人大赛中摘夺桂冠.能够收获这样喜人的成绩,无疑与我国高校在相关学科与专业中的人才培养息息相关.自2015年东南大学首次获批开设本科专业“机器人工程”起,截至2020年,我国开设相关专业的本科院校共有249所,覆盖全国28个省(区、市),为我国机器人制造事业输送着越来越多的人才,越来越多热衷于机器人制造事业的学子能够在更多样、更广阔的平台谱写别样青春.

关键词： Construction industry  

摘要： The construction industry has been plagued with a labor shortage, poor productivity, high material wastage, and unsafe working conditions predominantly due to monotonous and labor-intensive activities. Unlike construction, other industries have successfully adopted prefabrication, automation, and robotics to enhance their productivity, safety, and sustainability throughout their processes. However, the construction industry is unable to fully integrate such groundbreaking technologies due to various challenges. To date, there is scarce research that identifies and documents the existing barriers to the usage of robotics, particularly within the United States construction industry, thus impeding the mainstream adoption of robotics due either to a lack of identifying such challenges or poor understanding of them. The goal of this study is to identify the documented barriers to adopting robotics in the US construction industry, which in turn can support a profound understanding of such barriers as well as informing the construction industry and academic researchers about how to look for solutions for these barriers. This effort of identifying the challenges to using robotics is the foundation to support and advance the adoption of such technology by, for example, fulfilling the need to provide robotic training for the future US workforce. To achieve this goal, this research targeted high-quality journals from ASCE as well as the ScienceDirect library and, as a result, identified 14 unique barriers through a critical literature review of 291 research articles published between the years 1980 and 2020. The study specifies unique findings that contribute to construction management, including planning, productivity, practices, workforce education and development, and construction automation, bodies of knowledge by identifying the challenges behind the uncertain adoption of robotics in the US construction industry. The findings of this research are also critical to the prof

关键词： 科学技术协会   机器人竞赛   机器人工程   创客   挑战赛   中小学生   综合技能   青少年  

摘要： 4月10日,由太原市教育局和太原市科学技术协会主办的第二十届太原市青少年机器人竞赛暨太原市第六届"创新未来"中小学生机器人竞赛在太原市第二十七中学举行。来自全市各中小学的614支队伍共计1400多名队员参赛。本次竞赛设有机器人综合技能、FLL工程挑战赛、VEX机器人工程挑战赛、机器人创意比赛、WER工程创新赛和创客竞赛等比赛项目。

关键词： Thread   Robotics   Screw threads   Porosity   Tensile strength   Manufacturing  

摘要： Electrochemically aligned collagen (ELAC) threads fabricated by the isoelectric focusing (IF) of collagen have previously shown potential in tissue engineering and more recently in the fabrication of biohybrid robot structures. For applications in biohybrid robotics, ELAC structures are needed that are both robust and compliant enough to facilitate muscle actuation. However, studies on the effects of IF parameters, and the interactions of such fabrication parameters, on the mechanical and geometric properties of resulting ELAC threads have not been previously found in literature. Understanding the impact of these manufacturing parameters on the material properties is critical to facilitate biohybrid robot design. In this study, the effects of IF duration, IF voltage, and collagen solution concentration were investigated and showed statistically significant effects on adjusting ELAC properties via single-factor experiments. The interactions between parameters exhibited significant joint effects on ELAC property tuning through two-factor experiments. Scanning electron microscopy and 2,4,6-trinitrobenzenesulfonic (TNBS) assays revealed the correlation between high mechanical properties and a combination of low porosity and high degree of crosslinking. By simply tuning IF parameters without changing other fabrication steps, such as crosslinker concentration, ELAC threads with a wide range of mechanical and geometric properties were fabricated. The average tensile modulus of the resulting ELAC threads ranged from 198 +/- 90 to 758 +/- 138 MPa. The average cross-sectional area ranged from 7756 +/- 1000 to 1775 +/- 457 mu m(2). The resultant mapping between IF parameters and ELAC thread properties enabled the production of strong and flexible threads with customizable properties.

关键词： Computer science education   Professional development   Elementary school curriculum   Computer science unplugged   Educational robotics   Curriculum implementation  

摘要： Integrating computer science (CS) into school curricula has become a worldwide preoccupation. Therefore, we present a CS and Robotics integration model and its validation through a large-scale pilot study in the administrative region of the Canton Vaud in Switzerland. Approximately 350 primary school teachers followed a mandatory CS continuing professional development program (CPD) of adapted format with a curriculum scaffolded by instruction modality. This included CS Unplugged activities that aim to teach CS concepts without the use of screens, and Robotics Unplugged activities that employed physical robots, without screens, to learn about robotics and CS concepts. Teachers evaluated positively the CPD and their representation of CS improved. Voluntary adoption rates reached 97% during the CPD and 80% the following year. These results combined with the underpinning literature support the generalisability of the model to other contexts.

关键词： Social robots   Computers are social actors   Politeness   Children-robot interaction   User experience  

摘要： Social robots employed for childcare must conform to the norms of human society if they are to help children acquire valuable interpersonal interaction skills through the inculcation of behavioral attributes such as politeness. A survey of working parents identified certain behavioral principles necessary for social robots used with children at varying stages of their social development. A set of politeness principles was derived from scholarly discussions on human courtesy to design appropriately polite social robots. In communicating courteously with children, social robots must be able to express intimacy (i.e., friendliness), respect opinions (i.e., agreeableness), and remember previous interactions (i.e., attentiveness). These principles should improve children's evaluation of the robots and enhance their perception of the machines' sociality, likability, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness. The results obtained from this study confirm that the priorities of etiquette must be modified according to the developmental stages of children. These outcomes offer practical implications for the design of social robots.

关键词： 3D printing   actuators   self‐   healing   shape memory polymers   soft robotics  

摘要： Soft robotics is a growing field of research, focusing on constructing motor-less robots from highly compliant materials, some are similar to those found in living organisms. Soft robotics has a high potential for applications in various fields such as soft grippers, actuators, and biomedical devices. 3D printing of soft robotics presents a novel and promising approach to form objects with complex structures, directly from a digital design. Here, recent developments in the field of materials for 3D printing of soft robotics are summarized, including high-performance flexible and stretchable materials, hydrogels, self-healing materials, and shape memory polymers, as well as fabrication of all-printed robots (multi-material printing, embedded electronics, untethered and autonomous robotics). The current challenges in the fabrication of 3D printed soft robotics, including the materials available and printing abilities, are presented and the recent activities addressing these challenges are also surveyed.

关键词： autonomous robotics   electronics   self‐   healing materials   self‐   repair  

摘要： Robots are increasingly assisting humans in performing various tasks. Like special agents with elite skills, they can venture to distant locations and adverse environments, such as the deep sea and outer space. Micro/nanobots can also act as intrabody agents for healthcare applications. Self-healing materials that can autonomously perform repair functions are useful to address the unpredictability of the environment and the increasing drive toward the autonomous operation. Having self-healable robotic materials can potentially reduce costs, electronic wastes, and improve a robot endowed with such materials longevity. This review aims to serve as a roadmap driven by past advances and inspire future cross-disciplinary research in robotic materials and electronics. By first charting the history of self-healing materials, new avenues are provided to classify the various self-healing materials proposed over several decades. The materials and strategies for self-healing in robotics and stretchable electronics are also reviewed and discussed. It is believed that this article encourages further innovation in this exciting and emerging branch in robotics interfacing with material science and electronics.

关键词： biodegradable   electronic skins   green electronics   green materials   soft robotics   sustainability  

摘要： The advancement of technology has a profound and far-reaching impact on the society, now penetrating all areas of life. From cradle to grave, one is supported by and depends on a wide range of electronic and robotic appliances, with an ever more intimate integration of the digital and biological spheres. These advances, however, often come at the price of negatively impacting our ecosystem, with growing demands on energy, contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution-from production to improper disposal. Mitigating these adverse effects is among the grand challenges of the society and at the forefront of materials research. The currently emerging forms of soft, biologically inspired electronics and robotics have the unique potential of becoming not only like their natural antitypes in performance and capabilities, but also in terms of their ecological footprint. This review outlines the rise of sustainable materials in soft and bioinspired robotics, targeting all robotic components from actuators to energy storage and electronics. The state-of-the-art in biobased robotics spans flourishing fields and applications ranging from microbots operating in vivo to biohybrid machines and fully biodegradable yet resilient actuators. These first steps initiate the evolution of robotics and guide them into a sustainable future.

关键词： actuators   artificial muscles   human–   machine interfaces   soft electronics   soft robotics  

摘要： Artificial muscles are the core components of the smart and interactive soft robotic systems, providing the capabilities in shape morphing, manipulation, and mobility. Intense research efforts in the development of artificial muscles are based on the dielectric elastomer actuators, pneumatic actuators, electrochemical actuators, soft magnetic actuators, and stimulus responsive polymers. Recent progress has presented artificial muscles with impressive specific power output exceeding that of the natural muscles, dexterous shape morphing behavior that can be programmed and reconfigured, and exceptional high maneuverability to traverse surfaces with obstacles and different textures. Here, a succinct and critical summary is provided on the materials and strategies that have contributed to the important advancement of the artificial muscles in recent research. On that basis, the exciting opportunities are discussed in the integration of soft electronic devices with artificial muscles to enable smart and interactive soft robotic systems.