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Object surface properties are among the most important information which a robot requires in order to effectively interact with an unknown environment. This paper presents a novel haptic exploration strategy for recognizing the physical properties of unknown object surfaces using an intelligent finger. This developed intelligent finger is capable of identifying the contact location, normal and tangential force, and the vibrations generated from the contact in real time. In the proposed strategy, this finger gently slides along the surface with a short stroke while increasing and decreasing the sliding velocity. By applying a dynamic friction model to describe this contact, rich and accurate surface physical properties can be identified within this stroke. This allows different surface materials to be easily distinguished even if when they have very similar texture. Several supervised learning algorithms have been applied and compared for surface recognition based on the obtained surface properties. It has been found that the naïve Bayes classifier is superior to radial basis function network and k-NN method, achieving an overall classification accuracy of 88.5% for distinguishing twelve different surface materials.

The encapsulation of polyoxomolybdic cobalt (CoPMA) and polyoxomolybdic acid (PMA) within the Zrbased metal−organic frameworks (Zr-MOFs) of UiO-bpy (connected by 2,2′-bipyridine-5,5′-dicarboxylic acid linkers) and UiO-67 (connected by 4,4′-biphenyldicarboxylic acid linkers) has been achieved by direct solvothermal synthesis. Relatively high content of polyoxometalate (POM) clusters (ranging from 12 to 15 wt % loading) could be introduced to the cages of Zr-MOFs to form uniform hybrid composites of POM@Zr-MOFs. The catalytic properties of these composites were investigated for the olefins epoxidation with H 2 O 2 or molecular O 2 as oxidant. Among them, the catalyst CoPMA@ UiO-bpy showed the highest catalytic activity and stability for cyclooctene epoxidation with H 2 O 2 as oxidant and could also act as efficient heterogeneous catalyst for the oxidation of styrene and 1-octene with O 2 as oxidant and tert-butyl hydroperoxide (t-BuOOH) as initiator. The excellent catalytic performance of the hybrid composite CoPMA@UiO-bpy should be mainly attributed to the uniform distribution of POM clusters within the size-matched cages of Zr-MOFs, as well as the multiple interactions between the CoPMA clusters and the functional groups (bipyridine and Zr−OH) located in the framework of UiObpy.

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Highly active catalysts for the dehydrogenation of formic acid were screened by using different amine-modified ZrSBA-15 as supports.