Controlling the motion of particles on a vibrating plate using dynamic acoustic fields

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School of Electrical Engineering | Doctoral thesis (article-based) | Defence date: 2020-06-10

Date

2020

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

76 + app. 65

Series

Aalto University publication series DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS, 83/2020

Abstract

Acoustic manipulation, a technique that moves objects by sound, has emerged as a promising method for handling of matter with a wide range of applications in biomedical research, microsystem assembly, lab-on-a-chip, and tissue engineering. Classical acoustic manipulation techniques operate by forming standing pressure waves and trapping the particles in the nodes or antinodes of the waves, enabling the formation of simple patterns of particles. During the last decade, a progress towards more dynamic devices has been initiated, resulting in the emergence of dynamic-field devices. Dynamic-field devices are able to move the acoustic traps, and accordingly the trapped objects, by dynamically reshaping the acoustic field. They enable complex manipulations such as moving biological organisms along predefined trajectories. Despite the remarkable achievements, the state-of-the-art acoustic manipulation methods face two major challenges: (1) The methods depend on the acoustic traps for manipulation, imposing clear functional limitations, e.g., to operate in the whole workspace, the device needs to create trapping points in that space; (2) Motion decoupling is challenging as the acoustic fields are global and when created, certain forces imposed by the shape of the acoustic field are applied to the particles and couple their motion. The suggested methods to solve these challenges typically demand a complex hardware with several, even hundreds, of transducers. First and foremost, this thesis introduces a new perspective on acoustic manipulation methods, which suggests motion control out of the acoustic traps. The idea has been applied to a vibrating plate in two environments, in air and underwater. It has major benefits compared to the state-of-the-art methods, where it considerably simplifies the hardware. For instance, this thesis shows that a single acoustic source can be used to simultaneously control the motion of up to six particles. Secondly, the thesis reports a novel method to control the motion of multiple objects independently and simultaneously inside a global field. It proposes employing a spatially highly nonlinear excitation field, but still global, for independent and simultaneous manipulation of multiple objects. The method allows complex operations on a vibrating plate in air and underwater, such as multi-particle manipulation on user-specific trajectories, pattern formation and transformation, and particle sorting. Finally, the thesis introduces a model-free control method based on reinforcement learning for dynamic-field devices. In this method, the controller does not need a prior knowledge of the acoustic field and learns the optimal control policy for each manipulation task by merely interacting with the acoustic field. The thesis reports the successful implementation of the method to a vibrating plate, allowing manipulation of single and multiple particles towards target locations.

Description

The public defense on 10th June 2020 at 14:00 (2 p.m.) will be available via remote technology. Link: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/61168774416 Zoom Quick Guide: https://www.aalto.fi/en/services/zoom-quick-guide Electronic online display version of the doctoral thesis is available by email by request from aaltodoc-diss@aalto.fi

Supervising professor

Zhou, Quan, Assoc. Prof., Aalto University, Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Finland

Thesis advisor

Zhou, Quan, Assoc. Prof., Aalto University, Department of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Finland

Keywords

vibrating plate, motion, acoustic fields

Other note

Parts

  • [Publication 1]: Quan Zhou, Veikko Sariola, Kourosh Latifi, Ville Liimatainen. Controlling the motion of multiple objects on a Chladni plate. Nature Communications 7, 12764, 2016.
    Full text in Acris/Aaltodoc: http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201610124975
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms12764 View at publisher
  • [Publication 2]: Kourosh Latifi, Harri Wijaya, Quan Zhou. Multi-particle acoustic manipulation on a Chladni plate. In International Conference on Manipulation, Automation and Robotics at Small Scales (MARSS), Montreal, Canada, July 2017.
    Full text in Acris/Aaltodoc: http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201711217609
    DOI: 10.1109/MARSS.2017.8001920 View at publisher
  • [Publication 3]: Kourosh Latifi, Harri Wijaya, Quan Zhou. Motion of heavy particles on a submerged Chladni plate. Physical Review Letters, 122(18), p.184301, 2019.
    Full text in Acris/Aaltodoc: http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201905133114
    DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.184301 View at publisher
  • [Publication 4]: Harri Wijaya, Kourosh Latifi, Quan Zhou. Two-Dimensional manipulation in mid-air using a single transducer acoustic levitator. Micromachines, 10(4), p.257, 2019.
    Full text in Acris/Aaltodoc: http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201906203911
    DOI: 10.3390/mi10040257 View at publisher
  • [Publication 5]: Kourosh Latifi, Artur Kopitca, Quan Zhou. Rapid mode-switching for acoustic manipulation. In International Conference on Manipulation, Automation and Robotics at Small Scales (MARSS), Helsinki, Finland, July 2019.
    Full text in Acris/Aaltodoc: http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-201911156267
    DOI: 10.1109/MARSS.2019.8860952 View at publisher
  • [Publication 6]: Kourosh Latifi, Artur Kopitca, Quan Zhou. Model-free control for dynamic-field acoustic manipulation using reinforcement learning. IEEE Access, 8, pp.20597-20606, 2020.
    Full text in Acris/Aaltodoc: http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:aalto-202002282296
    DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2969277 View at publisher

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