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This thesis presents the development of a tendon driven continuum robot segment with a modular design. This work begins by reviewing existing literature surrounding continuum and modular robotics to better understand the current state of the art; and look for opportunities to make a novel contribution. The proposed design fills gaps in current research by showing a significant lifting capabilities due to a novel interlocking vertebrae system to restrict undesired torsional movement, while allowing bending in two degrees of freedom. Continuum segment modularity is achieved by embedding the actuation, control electronics and a battery in one end of the segment. This avoids the need for a bulky actuation unit and allows a varying numbers of segments; or a range of end effectors; to be connected via a universal interface integrated into the tip and the base. The design was developed through a number of iterations until a final solution was reached. The segment features a continuous flexible core made from soft silicone, combined with rigid 3D printed vertebrae evenly distributed along its length. It is actuated by two antagonistic tendon pairs, each of which is driven by a single geared DC motor in a custom design gearbox assembly. The design features a hollow central bore running its entire length which is demonstrated to be used for fluid flow and a control line channel for a tip mounted end effector. The three design iterations which feature the interlocking vertebrae were subjected to quantitative experiments to evaluate workspace, lifting capabilities and torsional rigidity. Finite element analysis was conducted to verify the strength of key components and optimise geometry. A compact electronics system was created that is capable of wired or wireless control, and allowing external or internal battery power was created. A control system was developed for the final iteration, using kinematics to successfully provide position control. The modular segment was demonstrated in a range of applications; fire fighting drone, a pick and place manipulator, and snake robot. The final segment was capable of lifting a 2.5 kg payload.

Thermoacoustic instability is one of the most significant problems faced in the design of some combustion systems. Thermoacoustic oscillations arise due to feedback between acoustic waves and unsteady heat release rate when the fluctuating heat release rate is sufficiently in phase with the unsteady pressure. The primary aim of designers is to design linearly stable thermoacoustic systems in which these dangerous oscillations do not arise. In thermoacoustics, adjoint-based sensitivity analysis has shown promise at predicting the parameters which have the most influence on the linear growth and decay rates as well as oscillation frequency observed during periods of linear growth and decay. Therefore, adjoint-based methods could prove to be a valuable tool for developing optimal passive control solutions. This thesis aims to develop novel experimental sensitivity analysis techniques and provide a first comparison with the predictions of adjoint-based sensitivity analysis. In this thesis experimental sensitivity analysis is performed on (i) a vertical electrically-driven Rijke tube, and (ii) a vertical flame-driven Rijke tube. On the electrically-driven Rijke tube, the feedback sensitivity is studied by investigating the shift in linear growth and decay rates and oscillation frequency observed during periods of linear growth and decay due to the introduction of a variety of passive control devices. On the flame-driven Rijke tube, the base-state sensitivity is studied by investigating how the linear growth and decay rates as well as oscillation frequency during periods of linear growth and decay change as the convective time delay of the flame is modified. Adjoint-based sensitivity analysis gives the shift in linear growth and decay rate and the oscillation frequency when parameters are changed. This thesis provides experimental measurements of the same quantities, for comparison with the numerical sensitivity analysis, opening up new avenues for the development, implementation and validation of optimal passive control strategies for more complex thermoacoustic systems.

In mental health trials there is concern that the control treatment (therapy) might be contaminated. For example, this might be due to it being delivered by a clinician (therapist) who has been trained in the active intervention. It is often suggested by investigators, reviewers and funders of clinical trial proposals that cluster randomisation, with clusters defined at the level at which treatment contamination is thought to occur (e.g. therapists), should be used to prevent contamination. This thesis explores statistical methodologies used to account for both treatment contamination in the control trial arm and non-compliance in the experimental arm when estimating treatment efficacy. It considers trials where treatment receipt is measured on a binary scale and develops methods to accommodate continuous measures of treatment receipt. The primary research objective was to compare the efficiency of two competing trial design options for evaluating efficacy in the presence of contamination. First, treatment allocation by cluster randomisation together with an estimator of the average treatment effect that accounts for clustered data. Second, allocation at the participant level, me-asurement of treatment receipt in all participants, and use of a randomisation-based estimator to target the complier average causal effect. Monte Carlo simulations under the two options with a binary measure of treatment receipt showed that the cluster randomisation design was more efficient under high levels of contamination, modest intraclass correlation coefficients and small cluster sizes. With a continuous measure of treatment receipt, the design with cluster randomisation was favoured more frequently as the difference between potential (counterfactual) doses became smaller, i.e. when there was greater non-adherence. The secondary research objective was to develop a novel randomisation-based efficacy estimator in trials with contamination and non-compliance measured on a continuous scale. Efficacy estimators were applied to a trial of a psychological intervention for people with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes. There was some treatment contamination and non-compliance in the trial but little evidence of treatment efficacy according to the analyses. The tertiary objective was to review problems and solutions associated with contamination in published trials of complex interventions in mental health. A main output from this project is the proposal of a novel valid estimator for evaluating efficacy and a demonstration of its utility. Another output is the provision of an online decision support tool (using the results from the simulations) to help those planning trials choose between the two competing design options for dealing with contamination.

One of the tenets of personalisation was that people using services could achieve greater citizenship and help to design better supports if they were able to direct innovation in services. Implicit in this was an assumption that people using services would be able to utilise their social capital (resources based on social networks), an asset which was not prioritised by previous approaches to service delivery. This thesis sought to identify if social capital was present and if it was being accessed to support the personalisation of services, comparing and contrasting the situation in services for older people and for people with learning disabilities. Whilst an initial hypothesis was that service providers for these different groups charged different rates due to different levels of social capital, no difference in social capital was established between these two groups. People did have social capital, but it was not mobilised by individuals or state actors responsible for commissioning support. This led to a consideration of street-level bureaucracy and the environment shaped by austerity and the Care Act. The study concludes that the implementation of personalisation has frustrated the use of social capital, such that it has not contributed to the transformation of care.

This thesis responds to a long-established consensus around the work of Samuel Beckett: namely, that it is singularly resistant to interpretation and yet its capacity to resist interpretation can be understood through Beckett’s own comments and through claims implicit in the work itself. In his fictional writings and critical essays as well as his correspondence and reported comments, Beckett frequently insists that “the labour of composition” does not involve the artist’s intellect, and accordingly he recommends a mode of reception that places little weight on the search for meanings or messages. Particularly in Beckett’s fictional texts, these recommendations are often accompanied by begrudging, oblique acknowledgements that the mode of reception they describe is an impossible one, since audiences and readers are consistently imagined to be possessed by a fundamental need to “make sense” of the work. This thesis elucidates the dialogue with that imagined need that underlies so much of Beckett’s work by drawing upon modern theoretical accounts of the inevitability of interpretation offered by thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Peter Bürger, Barbara Herrnstein-Smith, Lionel Abel, Derek Attridge, and Charles Taylor. It is divided into four chapters that investigate how Beckett’s work operates under the weight of such logics of interpretation and that discuss the relation between Beckett’s anti-hermeneutic leanings and contemporaneous debates about artistic expression and proper modes of reception. In light of these discussions, each chapter re-evaluates one of Beckett’s rhetorical or stylistic strategies for “work[ing] on the nerves of the audience, not its intellect”: among these are de-centering or de-authorizing forms of multi-vocality; overt reliance on clichéd phrases and generic conventions; non-productive expenditures of words and events, particularly in the form of repetition; and meta-theatrical play with the unstable relationship between a performed play and a written script. Ultimately, the thesis shows that the Beckettian resistance to interpretation is not as singular as is commonly thought, and it opens up room for readings and adaptations of Beckett’s works that do not necessarily conform wholly to received notions of what Beckett would or would not have authorized.