Manipulating Highly Deformable Materials Using a Visual Feedback Dictionary

The complex physical properties of highly deformable materials such as clothes pose significant challenges fanipulation systems. We present a novel visual feedback dictionary-based method for manipulating defoor autonomous robotic mrmable objects towards a desired configuration. Our approach is based on visual servoing and we use an efficient technique to extract key features from the RGB sensor stream in the form of a histogram of deformable model features. These histogram features serve as high-level representations of the state of the deformable material. Next, we collect manipulation data and use a visual feedback dictionary that maps the velocity in the high-dimensional feature space to the velocity of the robotic end-effectors for manipulation. We have evaluated our approach on a set of complex manipulation tasks and human-robot manipulation tasks on different cloth pieces with varying material characteristics.Comment: The video is available at goo.gl/mDSC4

An adaptive extended fuzzy function state-observer based control with unknown control direction

In this paper, a novel adaptive extended fuzzy function state observer based controller is proposed to control a class of unknown or uncertain nonlinear systems. The controller uses Nussbaum-gain technique from literature to prevent controller singularity with unknown control direction and the controller degree of freedom is increased. A state observer which employs the adaptive extended fuzzy function system to approximate a nonlinear system dynamics and estimates the unmeasurable state. The stability of closed-loop control system are shown using Lyapunov stability criterion and Nussbaum function property. The proposed and conventional fuzzy system based controllers are designed to control an inverted pendulum in simulation and a flexible-joint manipulator in real-time experiment. The integral of absoulte error (IAE) of tracking, integral of squared error (ISE) of tracking and integral of required absolute control signal (IA U) performances are compared in applications. The aim of the paper is not only to improve the tracking performances, but also to implement the adaptive extended fuzzy function based controller to a real-time system and conduct the tracking with unknown control direction

Hybrid spiral-bacterial foraging algorithm for a fuzzy control design of a flexible manipulator

A novel hybrid strategy combining a spiral dynamic algorithm (SDA) and a bacterial foraging algorithm (BFA) is presented in this article. A spiral model is incorporated into the chemotaxis of the BFA algorithm to enhance the capability of exploration and exploitation phases of both SDA and BFA with the aim to improve the fitness accuracy for the SDA and the convergence speed as well as the fitness accuracy for BFA. The proposed algorithm is tested with the Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2013 (CEC2013) benchmark functions, and its performance in terms of accuracy is compared with its predecessor algorithms. Consequently, for solving a complex engineering problem, the proposed algorithm is employed to obtain and optimise the fuzzy logic control parameters for the hub angle tracking of a flexible manipulator system. Analysis of the performance test with the benchmark functions shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms its predecessor algorithms with significant improvements and has a competitive performance compared to other well-known algorithms. In the context of solving a real-world problem, it is shown that the proposed algorithm achieves a faster convergence speed and a more accurate solution. Moreover, the time-domain response of the hub angle shows that the controller optimised by the proposed algorithm tracks the desired system response very well

Advanced Strategies for Robot Manipulators

Amongst the robotic systems, robot manipulators have proven themselves to be of increasing importance and are widely adopted to substitute for human in repetitive and/or hazardous tasks. Modern manipulators are designed complicatedly and need to do more precise, crucial and critical tasks. So, the simple traditional control methods cannot be efficient, and advanced control strategies with considering special constraints are needed to establish. In spite of the fact that groundbreaking researches have been carried out in this realm until now, there are still many novel aspects which have to be explored

Robotic electromechanical object control by means of variable structure system

ArticleThe practical purpose of robot design is to transfer types of complex human activities that require much effort, are monotonous and harmful. The robotic systems differ from traditional automation measures in terms of their universality and the possibility to reconstruct them quickly which enables them to create flexible automation production measures on the basis of universal equipment. Therefore, the subject matter of the present article is constituted by manipulator robot control system methods (semi-continuous control method, coordinator parameter control method and adaptive control method etc.) and the aim of the present study is to cover the said manipulator robot control system methods in order to assess the problems relating to their application and to provide the potential solutions. In analysing studies by other authors and assessing the results based on them, the following results of the present article were obtained: having regard to the peculiarities of control object model, due to their universality, theoretical methods of systems with semi-continuous control are the most attractive. The approach of other studies is also improper as it is claimed that the dynamics of electric executive equipment may be neglected and control moments can be formed in the same way as breakage functions and the problem which occurred may partly be solved, by using the advantages of the system with semi-continuous control in the pre-limiting situation which occurs by approximating semi-continuous control by means of continuous functions. The fundamental gap of the majority of electromechanical object control studies is, first of all, related with the fact that the phase variables are considered measurable, so the necessity arises to note that the entire complex of measurement equipment may lead to a significantly more expensive control system; moreover, measurement equipment adds additional dynamics to the control system and makes the synthesis procedure even more complex

SDRE APPLIED TO POSITION AND VIBRATION CONTROL OF A ROBOT MANIPULATOR WITH A FLEXIBLE LINK

This paper presents position and vibration control of a flexible robot composed of two rigid and one flexible links. Position is controlled by the current applied to the DC motor armature. To control vibrations of the flexible structure, Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) are used. Due to phase transformations, the SMA can change its stiffness through temperature variation, considering and taking advantage of this characteristic the vibration control is done. Control is achieved via the State Dependent Ricatti Equations (SDRE) technique, which uses suboptimal control and system local stability search. The simulation results show the feasibility of the proposed control for the considered system

Design and analysis of a robust, low-cost, highly articulated manipulator enabled by jamming of granular media

Hyper-redundant manipulators can be fragile, expensive, and limited in their flexibility due to the distributed and bulky actuators that are typically used to achieve the precision and degrees of freedom (DOFs) required. Here, a manipulator is proposed that is robust, high-force, low-cost, and highly articulated without employing traditional actuators mounted at the manipulator joints. Rather, local tunable stiffness is coupled with off-board spooler motors and tension cables to achieve complex manipulator configurations. Tunable stiffness is achieved by reversible jamming of granular media, which-by applying a vacuum to enclosed grains-causes the grains to transition between solid-like states and liquid-like ones. Experimental studies were conducted to identify grains with high strength-to-weight performance. A prototype of the manipulator is presented with performance analysis, with emphasis on speed, strength, and articulation. This novel design for a manipulator-and use of jamming for robotic applications in general-could greatly benefit applications such as human-safe robotics and systems in which robots need to exhibit high flexibility to conform to their environments.United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Maximum Mobility and Manipulation Program