In everyday life humans perform many tasks with other partners which involve coordination, involuntary communication and mutual control adaptation, as the case of carrying objects together with another person. Humanoid robots may help with such activities ...
The inclusion of dispersion (van der Waals, vdW) forces in first-principles modeling of disordered chalcogenides is analyzed and critically discussed in view of their impact on the atomic structure. To this purpose we considered the case of glassy GeTe4. W ...
Out of plane instability of reinforced concrete walls is a failure mechanism observed rather recently following the earthquakes in Chile (2010) and New Zealand (2011). Global out of plane instability is a phenomenon that may occur in thin walls, subjected ...
Robotic origami allows rapid prototyping of intelligent robots and machines constructed from thin sheets of functional materials. Multimaterial-based design freedom of origami robots creates functional versatility; however, the design parameters pose chall ...
Our work addresses the problem of placement of threads, or virtual cores, onto physical cores in a multicore NUMA system. Different placements result in varying degrees of contention for shared resources, so choosing the right placement can have a large ef ...
This work is concerned with the mechanical design and the description of the different components of a new mobile base for a lightweight mobile manipulator. These kinds of mobile manipulators are normally composed of multiple lightweight links mounted on a ...
Sub-millimeter scale devices are developing rapidly taking smaller, smarter, and more precise forms. This is achieved thanks to advancements in micro-manufacturing tools and techniques. For micro-production, a miniaturization of the machinery is a prominen ...
This thesis advances the field of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) through the development of device designs, fabrication processes, strain characterization technique and modelling tool. It provides the first demonstration that DEAs can be interfaced ...
The Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) is a 3 TeV e+e- machine, currently under design at CERN, that targets to explore the terascale particle physics regime. The experiment requires a high luminosity of 2x10^34 cm^2 s^-1, which can be achieved with ultra low ...
The tip leakage vortex (TLV), which develops in the clearance between the blade tip and the casing of axial turbomachines, appears in many industrial applications, such as air transportation, space rockets and hydraulic machines. In the latter, cavitation ...