The Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) is presently involved in the collaborative effort on the NSF funded Engineering Research Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power (ERCCEFP) Project 2G with Vanderbilt University and Georgia Tech. Project 2G: Fluid Power Surgery and Rehabilitation Via Compact Integrated Systems is aimed at breaking major technical barriers related to compact integrated systems (by designing systems where valves, cylinders, and sensors are not separate entities and can be manufactured simultaneously) and making fluid power systems safe and easy to use. Fully exploiting fluid power as a compact, efficient, and effective source of energy transmission is a vision of the ERCCEFP and MSOE seeks to exploit this vision with additive manufacturing. MSOE has sought to accomplish this by improving the understanding of additive technologies for applications in fluid power to develop more compact and inherently safe devices. Through MSOE's efforts, novel actuators, mechanisms, non-assembly fluid power robots were developed. Modeling of additively manufactured fluidic bellows and comparison to other actuation technologies was a product of MSOE's research to illustrate the feasibility of additive manufacturing in fluid power robotic surgery. Prior work, collaborative efforts, future research and potential applications of MSOE's efforts are discussed.
展开▼
