Researchers at UC Riverside have received a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a robotic assistive device to help infants with movement difficulties. The soft wearable device will fit over little arms to support them or offer an extra boost in their movements.

The goal for the device is to provide as-needed assistance by autonomously yielding to the users intention, or applying assistive forces to help the user's arm reach the desired object, said Konstantinos Karydis, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering and grant lead researcher.

Neuromuscular disorders, such as muscular dystrophy, make movement difficult for infants, who often require motor training to help strengthen their movements and minimize developmental delays. The goal for the robotic device under development is to help infants perform and learn movements, similar to what they would do during a motor training session.

The device will perceive the intention of an infant to reach for an object and help their arm, but most of the work will be done by the infant, said Elena Kokkoni, an assistant professor of bioengineering and co-lead researcher on the grant.

The device will leverage soft robotics technology being developed in Karydiss lab, as well as an array of human-centered closed-loop control strategies by other UCR investigators. Salman Asif, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, will develop a lensless camera system to help users perceive the environment, such as the position of a target object. Bioengineering professor William Grover will help improve the safety and efficiency of the device via air-powered logic circuits that dramatically reduce the amount of electronic hardware required to control soft robots. And computer science and engineering professor Philip Brisk will help achieve real-time execution of the control, sensing and actuation via efficient distributed computation algorithms.

Once they have created a prototype, the team will test the device with neurotypical infants as well as infants with neuromuscular diseases of different severity levels, from those with fewer or lower quality movement to those that cannot move at all.

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Robotic assistive device will lend a helping hand to infants with movement difficulties - UC Riverside

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As a Martian lander descends toward the Red Planets surface, when can its parachute be safely deployed? Open it too early, while the lander is hurtling through the atmosphere, and it might tear off but open it too late and the lander might not slow down enough to prevent a catastrophic crash landing.

There are seemingly endless possibilities in this complex conundrum.

One way to solve this puzzle is to use a computer to simulate the Mars landing, which is exactly how students in 16.0002/18.0002 (Introduction to Computational Science and Engineering) answered this question, which was part of their very first problem set.

It was interesting because there are a few ways you can model the problem, says Andres Arroyo, a first-year student who took the course during the fall term. You can model it in terms of how the speed of the lander changes over time or how the speed changes as it changes position. Depending on what your goal is from the simulation, you might try different approaches. I thought that was one of the most interesting things we did.

The course, launched last fall, is designed to teach students how computation collides with the physical world. It was developed through the MIT Schwarzman College of Computings Common Ground for Computing Education, a multidepartment initiative that aims to blend the teaching of computing and other disciplines.

The half-semester course places programming in the context of computational science and engineering, a field that focuses on innovative applications of computation.

Students learn to use computer programs for simulation, optimization, and uncertainty quantification. These foundational principles are framed with tangible examples designed to be relatable to students who arent necessarily computer science majors. Most students in the course this fall were either studying aeronautics and astronautics or math.

Modeling real-life problems

Simulations like our Martian lander simulation are what people actually use computers for. Did NASA solve our little differential equation? No, Im sure they have many more bells and whistles in their model. But conceptually, this is what people actually do, says Youssef Marzouk, professor of aeronautics and astronautics and co-instructor for the course this term. This is how I work, even in my own research. There is the modeling, there is the code, there are the outputs of the code, and you iterate between these things.

Building the course around such concrete examples gives students a sense of how many problems can be approached using computational models. Most students take the course in their first or second year, and many have yet to pick a major, so it is especially valuable to give them a taste of how computation is applied in many fields, he says.

In developing the course, the faculty wanted to cover the basic aspects of computational science and engineering in a way that would make the concepts come alive to students, says co-instructor Laurent Demanet, professor of applied mathematics, who designed the course with David Darmofal, the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Lectures cover the fundamental equations at work in a certain problem, such as Newtons law of motion for the Mars lander example, and then students learn to express those basic equations in an algorithm.

It is the combination of math with science and computer science. It sings when you put it all together, Demanet says. For the students, it is really a skills-based class. We want to provide students with skills that can be used almost everywhere in their studies later on, and then in so many other domains as well.

From equations to simulations

During one lecture, Demanet described Newtons law of cooling (the rate at which an object cools is proportional to the temperature difference between the object and its surroundings). Then he ran a simulation using Python code that showed how long it would take a cup of coffee to cool from 85 to 50 degrees.

One of the biggest challenges of developing the course has been introducing these mathematical concepts while giving students enough context that they make sense for some contemporary applications but without overwhelming them with too many details, he says.

Beyond imparting concrete skills, the examples are also designed to inspire students. For instance, one lecture that focused on climate science used mathematical equations for heat transfer to debunk a false claim that water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

But Demanet told the students not to take his word for it he demonstrated a computer simulation that showed how greenhouse gases have affected the overall rise in global temperature over many decades.

Outside the classroom, students applied their computational chops to a wide range of real-world problem sets, from optimizing the placement of cell phone towers around MIT, to charting how Covid-19 vaccine effectiveness wanes over time, to evaluating the impact a geothermal heating system could have on the temperature inside a home.

For Penelope Herrero-Marques, the geothermal example piqued her interest because shed like to install a system in her own home someday to reduce her carbon footprint. Herrero-Marques, a sophomore majoring in mechanical engineering who took the course last spring, was drawn to its relevant problem sets even though she had little background using computational approaches.

Some of the problems were a bit scary at first just because they were so big. For our first p-set in the class we are supposed to model the Mars landing. But the professors did a good job breaking it down into smaller problems. Dont get overwhelmed. Each big problem can be broken down into smaller problems that you are actually able to tackle, she says.

She is now sharing that wisdom as a teaching assistant for the course.

Fellow teaching assistant Mark Chiriac, a sophomore, took the course in its first iteration. The math major wanted to learn more about algorithms but also focus on applications he found interesting, like planetary motion.

While one of the trickiest problems involved locating cell phone towers around MIT, it was also among Chiriacs favorites because the example was so realistic. Successfully solving that optimization problem gave him the confidence to apply those skills in other courses, he says.

This course puts together parts of coding, math, and physics in this beautiful blend to give everyone the tools to tackle very relevant problems that are necessary in our world right now. It showed me how these different areas of science tie together in ways that I knew existed, but had not yet experienced for myself, he says.

Ultimately, the skills students build in this course will help them tackle scientific prediction problems in whichever discipline they choose, Demanet says.

I hope the students walk away with an appreciation of how computation can be used to really simulate complicated things in the world around them, Marzouk adds. I hope they see the power that it has and have some appreciation that it is not just a black box. There are really interesting ideas and algorithms that go into how that happens. Whether they spend the rest of their career learning about those ideas and algorithms or whether they stop right here, I think that is a valuable takeaway.

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Making computation come alive | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology - MIT News

When an interdisciplinary team from The University of New Mexico was awarded a four-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation in 2020, the goal was to develop novel, bio-inspired software and drones to measure and sample volcanic gases.

One year later, the Project VolCAN team got a spectacular opportunity to do just that and make history in the process by becoming what is believed to be one of the first research teams to collect uncontaminated gases from an active volcanic eruption.

In late-November, UNMs team flew a drone into the erupting Cumbre Vieja volcano at La Palma Island in Spains Canary Islands. The eruption, which began in September and ended in late December, is thelargestin Europe in 500 years.

Since the fall, volcanic lava flows from Cumbre Vieja havedestroyedmore than1,000 homesand covered significantparts of the Western side of the island with ash.Thecontinuous emission of ash from the volcano has resulted in frequent closing of the airport,which along with high sulfur dioxide and aerosol concentrations in the air,makes for hazardous conditions. Frequent earthquakes add to the mix of nature displaying itspower.

It is a dramatic and devastating occurrence but was a rare and perfect opportunity for the VolCAN team to put its resources to the test, so they did just that navigating all the physical and bureaucratic hoops to make their way to the island with five drones and a handful of team members with the mission of collecting gas samples by flying drones into the volcano. The VolCAN team wasone of several international researchgroups working on the eruption of Cumbre Viejaat the time.

"We got uncontaminated gas samples from the plume that told us where the magma causing the eruption was coming from. No one has ever been able to do that during an eruption before." Matthew Fricke, research assistant professor, computer science

As the research team directed the UNM-programmed autonomous drones into the gas plumes, they protected themselves from the noxious gases by donning military-grade gas masks. But their risky efforts were a success, becoming what is believed to be the first team to sample uncontaminated gases from an erupting volcano for later carbon isotope analyses. This resulted in a treasure trove of data to help better understand the course of the eruption.

The robot missions couldnt have gone better, said Matthew Fricke, one of the principal investigators on the VolCAN project and a research assistant professor of computer science. We got uncontaminated gas samples from the plume that told us where the magma causing the eruption was coming from. No one has ever been able to do that during an eruption before. That data allows us to try and forecast the duration and intensity of the eruption.

The research teamdirected UNM-programmed autonomous drones into the gas plumes to sample uncontaminated gases from an erupting volcano for later carbon isotope analyses.

After collecting the gases, the teammade CO2 concentrationtransectsof the plumeand obtainedvideo footage of the eruption. These gas sampleswere analyzed for carbon isotopes in collaboration withand using instrumentation of the local scientists onLaPalma. The obtained dataprovides new insights into thenature and depth of the magma sourcein nearreal-time. This information, together with other data collected by numerous scientists from local andinternational institutions,will result in forecasts aboutthe ongoing and future volcanic activity.

VolCAN is a collaboration between the School of Engineering (Departments of Computer Science, and Electrical and Computer Engineering) and Earth and Planetary Sciences. It is led by Fricke, Melanie Moses and Jared Saia, faculty in the Department of Computer Science; Tobias Fischer, a professor andScott Nowicki a Research Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences; Rafael Fierro, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and John Ericksen, a research assistant in computer science.

The meshing of various disciplines ranging from experts in volcano activity, theoretical algorithms, environmental monitoring, drones and sensors allows the team to accomplish far more than they could do on their own, team members said.

Fischer, a professor of earth and planetary sciences, specializes in volcanology with an emphasis on active volcanism. He keeps up on active volcanoes around the world and is always looking for new ways to analyze emitted gases and particularly CO2 levels, which give important clues into the intensity and likely duration of a volcano. Fischer said the VolCAN project came together around 2017 after he read about Melanie Moses work in the NASA Swarmathon, which involves programming robotic vehicles to communicate and interact as a collective swarm. When he learned about the swarmies, he immediately imagined the possibilities of a collaborative project involving volcanoes.

The swarm consists of multiple autonomous aerial drones that use algorithms inspired by biology to monitor the unpredictable environments surrounding volcanoes. This project will develop, analyze and rigorously test a co-robot swarm of unpiloted air vehicles (UAVs) that collect valuable scientific data in dynamic and unpredictable environments.TheVolCANswarm will use bio-inspired algorithms to detect CO2plumes, descend plume gradients to measure maximum flux of CO2 from ground sources, estimate plume size and infer maps of multiple CO2sources over hundreds of square kilometers.

The collaboration is driving the progress, Fischer said. We would have never been able to do this kind of sensing work on our own.

The UNM team also collaborated with Professor Einat Lev (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) and her Ph.D. studentJanine Birnbaum to measure lava flow rates with drones to inform their computational models.The team also said the expedition to La Palma could not have succeeded without the help, guidance and logistical support from EleazarPadron,LucaDAuria, NemesioPerez,PedroHernandez PerezandPepeBarrancosMartinezof theEl Centro Nacional deVolcanologao InstitutoVolcanolgicode Canarias(INVOLCAN), UnidadMilitarde Emergencias, flight coordinator and Jonathan Rodriguez.

There are an estimated 500 volcanoes that emit volcanic gasestothe atmosphere around the world, so there are many future expeditions the VolCAN team could make. In addition to monitoringgassesthat precede volcanic eruptions, thereby protecting human lives, it will also measure how much carbon dioxide is emitted from volcanoes to better understand how they contribute to the global carbon budget. TheVolCANswarm can adapt to environmental conditions autonomously in real-time, and it can also be guided by scientists to collect scientific data during the battery-limited flights of small drones, Fricke said.

Our approach leverages the advantages of bio-inspired algorithms that are fast rather than perfectly accurate, and resilient rather than centrally controlled, Fricke said.

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UNM's VolCAN team makes history in Canary Islands - UNM Newsroom