This thesis reports high energy-density electrostatic actuators for use in soft robotics. This thesis has two main parts: a) a detailed study of electro-adhesion using microfabricated electrodes, and b) a flexi-ble fiber-shaped linear motor.
Electro-adhesi ...
The control of movement and orientation of gas-phase molecules has become the focus of many research areas in molecular physics. Here, ND3 molecules are polarized in a segmented, curved electrostatic guide and adiabatically aligned inside a rotatable mass ...
Literature on linear induction motors (LIMs) has proposed several approaches to model the behavior of such devices for different applications. In terms of accuracy and fidelity, field analysis-based models are the most relevant. Closed-form or numerical so ...
The auxiliary power supply for medium voltage converters requires high insulation capability between the source and the load. Inductive power transfer technology, with an air gap between the primary and secondary coil, offers such high insulation capabilit ...
In this paper, we present a new parameterization and optimization procedure for minimizing the weight of ribbed plates. The primary goal is to reduce embodied CO2 in concrete floors as part of the effort to diminish the carbon footprint of the construction ...
This book has been designed for instructors in higher education or adult training who wish to develop a new course or revise an existing one. It adopts a practical, visual, and modular approach based on the principle of constructive alignment. At its heart ...
Two design studios were successively taught in two schools of architecture: one at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and the other at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, based on "A Global Morato ...
We develop new tools to study landscapes in nonconvex optimization. Given one optimization problem, we pair it with another by smoothly parametrizing the domain. This is either for practical purposes (e.g., to use smooth optimization algorithms with good g ...
Modern optimization is tasked with handling applications of increasingly large scale, chiefly due to the massive amounts of widely available data and the ever-growing reach of Machine Learning. Consequently, this area of research is under steady pressure t ...
While humans are known to have several premotor cortical areas, secondary motor cortex (M2) is often considered to be the only higher -order motor area of the mouse brain and is thought to combine properties of various human premotor cortices. Here, we sho ...
