MEchanical MIrroring using Controlled stiffness and Actuators (MEMICA) Homepage
This Website describes the JPL's NDEAA Technologies joint activity with
Prof. Mavroidis from
the Robotics and Mechanisms Dept., Rutgers University. In this project, the team is pursuing
the development and demonstration of a novel haptic interfacing capability called MEMICA (remote MEchanical MIrroring
using Controlled stiffness and Actuators). MEMICA is intended to provide human operators intuitive and interactive feeling
of the stiffness and forces at remote or virtual sites in support of space, medical, underwater, virtual reality, military
and field robots performing dexterous manipulation operations. The key aspect of the MEMICA system is a miniature
Electrically Controlled Stiffness (ECS) element that mirrors the stiffness at remote/virtual sites. The ECS elements
make use of Electro-Rheological Fluid (ERF), which is an Electro-Active Polymer (EAP), to achieve this feeling of
stiffness. Forces applied at the robot end-effector due to a compliant environment will be reflected to the user by
this ERF device where a change in the system viscosity will occur proportionally to the force to be transmitted.
View video of a scaled up ECS demo(5.6MB)
alternatively low resolution version(1.08MB)
Currently, medical applications of the MEMICA technology are being considered by the following team: JPL - Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Dr. Benjamin Dolgin and Dr. Sean Leary Rutgers University - Dr. Constantinos Mavroidis, and Dr. Mourad Bouzit Harbor-UCLA Medical Center - Rodney White, M.D., and George Kopchok NASA Johnson Space Center - Dr. Deborah Harm
"Robotics and Automatic NDE," Section 10.3,
Chapter 10: "Future Trends in Robotics and Automated NDE," Topics on NDE (TONE) Series, "Automation, Miniature Robotics and Sensors for Nondestructive Evaluation and Testing," Volume 4, Y. Bar-Cohen (Vol. Ed.), ASNT, Columbus, OH, March 2000.
"Human Muscle Enhancement Using Advanced Actuators," C. Mavroidis, J. Misuraca, K. DeLaurentis, M. Badescu, and Y. Bar-Cohen, DARPA Workshop on Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation (EHPA), Washington, D.C., March 2-3, 2000
Y. Bar-Cohen, C. Pfeiffer, C. Mavroidis and B. Dolgin, "Remote MEchanical MIrroring using Controlled stiffness and Actuators (MEMICA),"
New Technology Report, January 18, 1999, Item No. 0237b, Docket 20642, January 27, 1999. Provisional Patent on August 24, 1999,
Rutgers U. Docket #99-0056, Attorney's Docket No. 744-16P. Tech Briefs, Vol. 24, No. 2, Feb. 2000, pp. 7a-7b.
Filled for patent on Sept. 11, 2000.