Title: Synthesis and characterization of Lithium orthosilicate

Abstract:
Lithium-ion batteries (LIB) have found their way in every aspect of our daily activities and operations due to their energy storage capacity and lower global warming potential. Despite the obvious advantage, the issue remains electronic waste management at end-of-life. Most of the spent LIBs are dumped in landfills constituting potential negative environmental impacts such as heavy metal contamination of groundwater table, soil contamination and damage to human organs arising from bioaccumulation. While efforts have been made towards waste management, the conversion of spent LIB to useful materials remains under-explored. The present study explores a novel way for the synthesis and characterization of lithium orthosilicate (Li4SiO4) using spent LIB as precursor. The study provides an opportunity to convert electronic wastes into a sorbent material for mitigating climate change. The produced Li4SiO4 samples were characterized by BET, XRD, ICP-MS, FTIR, SEM analyses to help understand the structure and composition. Furthermore, the material was treated for CO2 capture in a TGA. Our findings demonstrated that the prepared material is Li4SiO4 and an environmentally friendly and low-cost preparation method. Furthermore, the material showed promising results for CO2 capture with a BET surface area ranging from 2.5 – 5 m2/g. These results are significantly important in furtherance of research on carbon capture, utilization and storage.

Design, fabrication, and testing of a legged soft robot that can walk and jump
This poster showcases the design of a quadruped robot equipped with legs made from a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) material known as FilaFlex. This material choice enables the robot to jump over a staircase with a height of 17 cm. The innovative leg design allows the robot to wind the legs into a fully flexed position. A separate motor then releases an actuation system, enabling the robot to leap upwards effectively.The robot’s design integrates LEGO bricks and gears with 3D-printed components made from PLA and FilaFlex, along with DC motors, to enhance performance. Through extensive modeling and simulations using MATLAB, OnShape, and SolidWorks, the robot successfully overcame the presented obstacle.The final design, constructed from laser-cut materials, proved robust enough to handle the internal forces generated during operation and achieve its intended task. This work highlights the ongoing advancements in soft robotics and demonstrates the potential for robots to navigate diverse terrains. Future developments will focus on building the body that is lighter and can support a higher load. this will allow it to jump higher and over bigger obstacles

Development of an Origami-Inspired Bistable Soft Robotic Gripper
The increasing demand for high-quality, delicate agricultural products like fruits and vegetables requires innovative harvesting solutions due to the limitations of manual labor. Traditional robotic grippers often fail to handle these items gently, causing bruise damage. This poster presents an origami-inspired bistable soft robotic gripper designed to address this challenge by providing a gentle and adaptive grasp of soft fruits – peaches. Utilizing a bistable mechanism, the gripper can remain in two stable states without continuous power input, automatically closing when contacting an object, thus reducing the need for active control. The gripper’s design includes parameters such as valley width, height, and wall thickness to optimize performance. Through a series of tests and simulations using SolidWorks and Abaqus CAE, the gripper demonstrated the ability to handle peaches without causing bruising. The final design, featuring a combination of rigid and soft materials for the fingers and a strategically positioned elastic ring, ensures efficient and damage-free fruit handling. This innovative approach not only enhances the efficiency of automated agricultural operations but also contributes to the production of higher-quality produce. Future work will focus on integrating the gripper components into a single part and further optimizing gripping parameters.

Optimizing Boundary Transformation Vectors by
Choosing the Best 2-D Representation

Boundary transformation vectors (BTVs) are a method tailored for analyzing damage in linear and nonlinear dynamic systems. BTVs are constructed by first comparing two system attractors-one representing the system with normal parameters and the other with altered parameters. A system attractor represents the long-term behavior that a dynamic system settles into after transient behavior has dissipated. Utilizing a 2-D representation of the system attractors, BTVs can be created by drawing vectors between the boundaries of the normal and altered attractors to illustrate system changes. The main objectives of this research were to understand the sensitivity of BTVs to different 2D attractor representations and determine an optimal representation method if given a set of data. Initially, literature regarding system attractors and their representations were reviewed. MATLAB was then used to code the four most promising representations for the system attractors, these being plane projections, Poincaré sections, principal component analysis (PCA), and singular value decomposition (SVD). The BTVs were constructed using simulated Lorenz attractor data. After successful implementation of the different representations, two comparison groups were formed. The first group involved altering the rho parameter (ρ) of the Lorenz system from its normal value (ρ = 28) to 27, 26, and 25. The second group used intermediate rho values (27.5, 26.5, and 25.5). Finally, MATLAB functions were used to evaluate the magnitude and direction of the resulting BTVs. Among the methods tested, Poincaré sections yielded the most consistent and effective BTV results, while PCA appeared least effective.