Operation of human-centered robot, in general, facilitates the creation of new process that may potentially harm the human operators. Design of safety-guaranteed operation of human-centered robots is, therefore, important since it determines the ultimate outcomes of operations involving safety of human operators. This study discusses the application of geometric tolerance and head injury criteria to safety assessment of human-centered robotic operations. Examples show that extending "Work Area" has more significant effect on the uncertainty in safety than extending the system range in the presence of velocity control.

In this paper, we found that modification of the local flexibility (or local stiffness) of the 4 parts on which shock absorbers are mounted in the vehicle body has some influence the level of ride safety and comfort. Multi-body dynamic analysis considering the flexibility of the vehicle body is performed using MSC/ADAMS and MSC/NASTRAN. More concretely speaking, natural frequencies and mode shapes computed by MSC/NASTRAN are used as input data for multi-body dynamic analysis in MSC/ADAMS. It is confirmed that the ride comfort can be improved by appropriately changing the local stiffness of the vehicle body through several simulations using MSC/ADAMS.

In many cases, rescue robots work under harsh conditions such as the presence of various obstacles, high temperature, and limited visibility, etc. These robots are required to have tough mechanical structure, good sensing and control capability, and reliable communication capability for receiving operator's command and sending information on the state of the robot and environment. In this study, a rescue robot that can investigate hazardous or disastrous sites with these capabilities is designed and implemented. The performance of the proposed rescue robot is tested under simulated disastrous environment.

Carbon nanotubes hold much promise as future materials for safe storage of hydrogen. In this paper, hydrogen transport mechanisms in single-walled carbon nano-tubes (SWNTs) for various temperatures and chiral indices were studied using molecular dynamics simulation method. The SWNT models of zigzag (10,0), chiral (10,5) and armchair (10,10) with hydrogen molecules inside were simulated at temperatures ranging from 253K to 373K. Movements of hydrogen molecules ($H_2$) inside a SWNT were analyzed using mean-square displacements and velocity autocorrelation functions.

Damping out high frequency low amplitude structural vibrations using PZT bimorph is presented. Static and Dynamic analyses of the piezoelectric bimorph bender were performed. Three layer piezoelectric actuators were modeled with SOLID5 coupled-field elements using ANSYS. Static deflection and modal analyses of the piezoelectric bimorph bender are presented. Proper tuning of the values of the resistor and inductor in the shunt circuit is required for maximum vibration suppression.