Advanced composite shells that may offer the potential to improve the structural performance of future aircraft fuselage structures were developed under this joint NASAindustry collaborative effort. Two cylindrical shells with tailored, tow-steered layups and continuously varying fiber angle orientations were designed and built at the National Center for Advanced Manufacturing -Louisiana Partnership. The shells were fabricated from unidirectional IM7/8552 graphite-epoxy pre-preg slit tape material fiber-placed on a constant-diameter mandrel. Each shell had the same nominal 8-ply [±45/±Θ] s layup, where the nominal fiber angle Θ in the tow-steered plies varied continuously from 10 degrees along the crown to 45 degrees on each side, then back to 10 degrees on the keel. One shell was fabricated with all 24 tows placed during each pass of the fiber placement machine, resulting in many tow overlaps on the shell surface. The fiber placement machine's individual tow cut/restart capability was also used to manufacture a second shell with tow drops and a more uniform laminate thickness. This paper presents an overview of the detailed design and manufacturing processes for these shells, and discusses issues encountered during their fabrication and post-cure evaluation. Future plans for structural testing and analyses of the shells are also discussed.

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Variable-stiffness shells are thin composite structures in which the reinforcement direction is a function of its surface co-ordinates. This paper presents a numerical investigation into the buckling and post-buckling of two variable-stiffness cylinders under axial compression. Both shell walls are made from unidirectional carbon fiber slit tapes that are steered to give them a piecewise-continuous fiber-angle variation around the circumference. Dynamic analyses of the complete loading and unloading cycles are computed using a time-integrated finite element model (Abaqus). The numerical results generated herein are compared with test data and are found to be in good agreement, in terms of axial force versus end-shortening and global displacement fields. The analyses provide significant new insight into the mechanisms underpinning collapse behavior of the shells. For example, the development of the initial nonlinear buckle, its dynamic snap-through, and the formation of a postbuckled configuration are clearly visible. One effect elucidated by this investigation is the symmetrybreaking mechanism of the circumferential stiffness variation. In contrast to a constant-stiffness cylinder, in which the total strain energy is invariant to the translation of a dimple of fixed dimensions, the present structures exhibit a single dominant post-buckling mode that are associated with the formation of 'trapped' surface dimples. In one case, this dominant mode is found to be stable over a significant amount of further end shortening.1 PhD Student.

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Traditional posterior nasopharyngeal biopsy using a flexible nasal endoscope has the risks of abrasion and injury to the nasal mucosa and thus causing trauma to the patient. Recently, a new class of robots known as continuum tubular robots (CTRs) provide a novel solution to the challenge with miniaturized size, curvilinear maneuverability, and capability of avoiding collision within the nasal environment. This paper presents a compact CTR which is 35 cm in total length, 10 cm in diameter, 2.15 kg in weight, and easy to be integrated with a robotic arm to perform more complicated operations. Structural design, end-effector design, and workspace analysis are described in detail. In addition, teleoperation of the CTR using a haptic input device is developed for position control in 3D space. Moreover, by integrating the robot with three electromagnetic tracking sensors, a navigation system together with a shape reconstruction algorithm is developed. Comprehensive experiments are conducted to test the functionality of the proposed prototype; experiment results show that under teleoperation, the system has an accuracy of 2.20 mm in following a linear path, an accuracy of 2.01 mm in following a circular path, and a latency time of 0.1 s. It is also found that the proposed shape reconstruction algorithm has a mean error of around 1 mm along the length of the tubes. Besides, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed robotic system being applied to posterior nasopharyngeal biopsy are demonstrated by a cadaver experiment. The proposed robotic system holds promise to enhance clinical operation in transnasal procedures.

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Minimally invasive procedures have gained ever-increasing popularity due to their advantages of smaller incisions, faster recoveries, fewer complications, and reduced scarring to name a few. With the force exertion and curvilinear flexibility at their distal end effectors, the continuum tubular robots have the potential to perform robot-assisted trans-orifice minimally invasive surgery, such as transnasal and transoral operations. During these procedures, it is important and challenging for the continuum tubular robot to automatically adjust its pose according to the target surgical sites and compensate for undesired disturbance, such as respiratory motions. In this paper, a singularity-avoidance visual servoing algorithm based on Jacobian Optimization has been proposed to improve safety and control continuum tubular robots based on intra-operative visual feedback in confined environments. Without the prior knowledge of robot kinematics or hand-eye calibration between the robot and the endoscope, the proposed model-free eye-in-hand visual servoing technique is capable of accomplishing the targeting tasks by adopting the safety-enhanced singularity avoidance mechanism and an efficient image-processing algorithm. The multiple experiments, including simulations, experiments conducted in a confined environment, and cadaveric studies, have been implemented and demonstrated to illustrate the superiority of the proposed singularity-avoidance visual servoing method.