Experimental research and analysis of three-finger micro-tweezers

A new type of three-finger micro-tweezer driven by electro-static force was developed for stable manipulation and assembly of micro devices. The whole system consists of micro-tweezers and a specially designed high frequency AC power supply. The free end of the fingers closes and opens with the increase and decrease of the voltage. The tweezers can grasp and manipulate micro objects at size from 30～100 μm. A quantitative simulation method based on boundarx element method(BEM) and equation of energy conservation is introduced to analyze the non-linear behaviors of the tweezer closure. The simulation results agree well with the experimental data.

Last decade update for three-finger toxins: Newly emerging structures and biological activities

Three-finger toxins(TFTs) comprise one of largest families of snake venom toxins. While they are principal to and the most toxic components of the venoms of the Elapidae snake family, their presence has also been detected in the venoms of snakes from other families. The first TFT, α-bungarotoxin, was discovered almost 50 years ago and has since been used widely as a specific marker of the α7 and muscle-type nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. To date, the number of TFT amino acid sequences deposited in the UniProt Knowledgebase free-access database is more than 700, and new members are being added constantly.Although structural variations among the TFTs are not numerous, several new structures have been discovered recently; these include the disulfide-bound dimers of TFTs and toxins with nonstandard pairing of disulfide bonds. New types of biological activities have also been demonstrated for the well-known TFTs, and research on this topic has become a hot topic of TFT studies. The classic TFTs α-bungarotoxin and α-cobratoxin, for example, have now been shown to inhibit ionotropic receptors of γ-aminobutyric acid, and some muscarinic toxins have been shown to interact with adrenoceptors. New, unexpected activities have been demonstrated for some TFTs as well, such as toxin interaction with interleukin or insulin receptors and even TFT-activated motility of sperm. This minireview provides a summarization of the data that has emerged in the last decade on the TFTs and their activities.

Receptor variability-driven evolution of snake toxins

Three-finger toxins （TFTs） are well-recognized non- enzymatic venom proteins found in snakes. However, although TFTs exhibit accelerated evolution, the drivers of this evolution remain poorly understood. The structural complexes between long-chain α-neurotoxins, a subfamily of TFTs, and their nicotinic acetylcholine receptor targets have been determined in previous research, providing an opportunity to address such questions. In the current study, we observed several previously identified positively selected sites （PSSs） and the highly variable C-terminal loop of these toxins at the toxin/receptor interface. Of interest, analysis of the molecular adaptation of the toxin-recognition regions in the corresponding receptors provided no statistical evidence for positive selection. However, these regions accumulated abundant amino acid variations in the receptors from the prey of snakes, suggesting that accelerated substitution of TFTs could be a consequence of adaptation to these variations. To the best of our knowledge, this atypical evolution, initially discovered in scorpions, is reported in snake toxins for the first time and may be applicable for the evolution of toxins from other venomous animals.

Mechanical Design and Drive Control of a Novel Dexterous Hand for On-Orbit Servicing

In order to meet the requirements of on-orbit servicing outside the cabin, a flexible, dexterous hand with easy grasping ability and strong loading capacity is designed. The dexterous hand is comprised of three fingers. Each finger is driven by a set of four linkages. Furthermore, two fingers have a set of axial rotational degrees of freedom. In order to achieve the position control and keep griping stability, the dexterous hand adopts a mechanism of hybrid force/position control. In the end, experimental results demonstrates that the on-orbit servicing dexterous hand has great adaptability and operational capability.

The Nonlinear Dynamic Behaviors of Electrostatic Micro-Tweezers

This work addresses the nonlinear dynamic behavior of different electrostaticmicro-tweezers,amicro electric actuator.This actuator,a cantilever beamelectrostatic micro-tweezers,has been extensively used in micro-electro-mechanical systems(MEMS).The importance of micro electric actuators manufactured is higher than the other part of MEMS since it is the power source of the entire micro-electro-mechanical systems.In actual operation,the instability and bad dynamic characteristics of the electric actuators will cause larger displacement mobility error,such as transport behavior and response procedures failure,etc.,and even damage the micro-electro-mechanical systems.To improve the actuator dynamic displacement accuracy,the dynamic behavior in the electric actuator system must be studied,especially for nonlinear dynamic behavior of system.In this work,the differential quadrature method(DQM)was employed to solve the problem of nonlinearity in the equation of motion.The results reveal that the proposed DQM model can be used to simulate the nonlinear behavior of the micro-tweezers efficiently Micro-tweezers of various shapes were studied to examine the feasibility of applying the DQMin analyzing their nonlinear responses.The simulated results agree very closely with the calculated and experimental data in the literature.

A 3D-printed Robot Hand with Three Linkage-driven Underactuated Fingers

In this study, we improved an underactuated finger mechanism by using Solidworks to simulate the grasp operation of a finger in some different situations. In addition, a robot palm is designed for the three-finger robot hand with the designed underactuated fingers. A Solidworks simulation was used to verify the rationality of the design. Some parts of the hand were modified to fit for 3D printing, and a prototype of the hand was produced by 3D printing, which could reduce the cost of the production process, as well as provide design flexibility and other advantages. Finally, some grasping experiments were made with the prototype. The results showed that the robot could grasp objects with different sizes, and further verified the rationality of the design and feasibility of fabricating the robot hand using 3D printing.