23 research outputs found
Advancing the Underactuated Grasping Capabilities of Single Actuator Prosthetic Hands
The last decade has seen significant advancements in upper limb prosthetics, specifically in the myoelectric control and powered prosthetic hand fields, leading to more active and social lifestyles for the upper limb amputee community. Notwithstanding the improvements in complexity and control of myoelectric prosthetic hands, grasping still remains one of the greatest challenges in robotics. Upper-limb amputees continue to prefer more antiquated body-powered or powered hook terminal devices that are favored for their control simplicity, lightweight and low cost; however, these devices are nominally unsightly and lack in grasp variety. The varying drawbacks of both complex myoelectric and simple body-powered devices have led to low adoption rates for all upper limb prostheses by amputees, which includes 35% pediatric and 23% adult rejection for complex devices and 45% pediatric and 26% adult rejection for body-powered devices [1]. My research focuses on progressing the grasping capabilities of prosthetic hands driven by simple control and a single motor, to combine the dexterous functionality of the more complex hands with the intuitive control of the more simplistic body-powered devices with the goal of helping upper limb amputees return to more active and social lifestyles. Optimization of a prosthetic hand driven by a single actuator requires the optimization of many facets of the hand. This includes optimization of the finger kinematics, underactuated mechanisms, geometry, materials and performance when completing activities of daily living. In my dissertation, I will present chapters dedicated to improving these subsystems of single actuator prosthetic hands to better replicate human hand function from simple control. First, I will present a framework created to optimize precision grasping – which is nominally unstable in underactuated configurations – from a single actuator. I will then present several novel mechanisms that allow a single actuator to map to higher degree of freedom motion and multiple commonly used grasp types. I will then discuss how fingerpad geometry and materials can better grasp acquisition and frictional properties within the hand while also providing a method of fabricating lightweight custom prostheses. Last, I will analyze the results of several human subject testing studies to evaluate the optimized hands performance on activities of daily living and compared to other commercially available prosthesis
The Design Of A Community-Informed Socially Interactive Humanoid Robot And End-Effectors For Novel Edge-Rolling
This dissertation discusses my work in building an HRI platform called Quori and my once separate now integrated work on a manipulation method that can enable robots like Quori, or any more capable robot, to move large circular cylindrical objects.
Quori is a novel, affordable, socially interactive humanoid robot platform for facilitating non-contact human-robot interaction (HRI) research. The design of the system is motivated by feedback sampled from the HRI research community. The overall design maintains a balance of affordability and functionality. Ten Quori platforms have been awarded to a diverse group of researchers from across the United States to facilitate HRI research to build a community database from a common platform.
This dissertation concludes with a demonstration of Quori transporting a large cylinder for which Quori does not have the power to lift nor the range of motion to dexterously manipulate. Quori is able to achieve this otherwise insurmountable task through a novel robotic manipulation technique called robotic edge-rolling. Edge-rolling refers to transporting a cylindrical object by rolling on its circular edge, as human workers maneuver a gas cylinder on the ground for example. This robotic edge-rolling is achieved by controlling the object to roll on the bottom edge in contact with the ground, and to slide on the surface of the robot\u27s end-effector. It can thus be regarded as a form of robotic dexterous, in-hand manipulation with nonprehensile grasps. This work mainly addresses the problem of grasp planning for edge-rolling by studying how to design appropriately shaped end-effectors with zero internal mobility and how to find feasible grasps for stably rolling the object with the simple end-effectors
Advances in Robot Kinematics : Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Advances in Robot Kinematics
International audienceThe motion of mechanisms, kinematics, is one of the most fundamental aspect of robot design, analysis and control but is also relevant to other scientific domains such as biome- chanics, molecular biology, . . . . The series of books on Advances in Robot Kinematics (ARK) report the latest achievement in this field. ARK has a long history as the first book was published in 1991 and since then new issues have been published every 2 years. Each book is the follow-up of a single-track symposium in which the participants exchange their results and opinions in a meeting that bring together the best of world’s researchers and scientists together with young students. Since 1992 the ARK symposia have come under the patronage of the International Federation for the Promotion of Machine Science-IFToMM.This book is the 13th in the series and is the result of peer-review process intended to select the newest and most original achievements in this field. For the first time the articles of this symposium will be published in a green open-access archive to favor free dissemination of the results. However the book will also be o↵ered as a on-demand printed book.The papers proposed in this book show that robot kinematics is an exciting domain with an immense number of research challenges that go well beyond the field of robotics.The last symposium related with this book was organized by the French National Re- search Institute in Computer Science and Control Theory (INRIA) in Grasse, France
Studio teorico e progettazione di un manipolatore per il lancio controllato di organi di presa
L’obiettivo di questa tesi consiste nella realizzazione di un manipolatore
robotico in grado di operare su oggetti lontani disposti in uno spazio di
lavoro 3-dimensionale. Il lavoro è stato svolto presso il Centro
Interdipartimentale di Ricerca “E. Piaggio” della Facoltà di Ingegneria
dell’Università di Pisa e si basa su una tecnica robotica chiamata casting
manipulation. Questa tecnica consente di dispiegare l’organo terminale di un
robot a grande distanza dalla base del robot stesso, lanciandolo e
controllando la sua traiettoria in volo mediante forze che sono trasmesse
all’organo terminale attraverso un cavo leggero collegato ad esso. Il cavo
può inoltre essere usato per recuperare l’organo terminale o per esercitare
forze sull’ambiente.
In questo lavoro si studiano la cinematica e la dinamica di un manipolatore
in grado di raggiungere oggetti a grande distanza e se ne presenta un
possibile progetto meccanico. Inoltre si affronta il problema del controllo
in tempo minimo della traiettoria dell’organo terminale durante la fase di
volo. Tale problema risulta di particolare interesse a causa delle
limitazioni sui controlli ammissibili dovuti alla natura stessa del cavo
che, come noto, può esercitare solo forze di trazione.L’efficacia della soluzione proposta è stata convalidata attraverso simulazioni
Generative and predictive models for robust manipulation
Probabilistic modelling of manipulation skills, perception and uncertainty pose many challenges at different stages of a typical robot manipulation pipeline. This thesis is about devising algorithms and strategies for improving robustness in object manipulation skills acquired from demonstration and derived from learnt physical models in non-prehensile tasks such as pushing. Manipulation skills can be made robust in different ways: first by improving time performance for grasp synthesis, second by employing active perceptual strategies that exploit generated grasp action hypothesis to more efficiently gather task-relevant information for grasp generation, and finally via exploiting predictive uncertainty in learnt physical models. Hence, robust manipulation skills emerge from the interplay of a triad of capabilities: generative modelling for action synthesis, active perception, and finally learning and exploiting uncertainty in physical interactions. This thesis addresses these problems by
• Showing how parametric models for approximating multimodal distributions can be used as a computationally faster method for generative grasp synthesis.
• Exploiting generative methods for dexterous grasp synthesis and investigating how active vision strategies can be applied to improve grasp execution safety, success rate, and utilise fewer camera views of an object for grasp generation.
• Outlining methods to model and exploit predictive uncertainty from learnt forward models to achieve robust, uncertainty-averse non-prehensile manipulation, such as push manipulation.
In particular, the thesis: (i) presents a framework for generative grasp synthesis with applications for real-time grasp synthesis suitable for multi-fingered robot hands; (ii) describes a sensorisation method for under-actuated hands, such as the Pisa/IIT SoftHand, which allows us to deploy the aforementioned grasp synthesis framework to this type of robotic hand; (iii) provides an active vision approach for view selection that makes use of generative grasp synthesis methods to perform perceptual predictions in order to leverage grasp performance, taking into account grasp execution safety and contact information; and (iv) finally, going beyond prehensile skills, provides an approach to model and exploit predictive uncertainty from learnt physics applied to push manipulation. Experimental results are presented in simulation and on real robot platforms to validate the proposed methods
MUSME 2011 4 th International Symposium on Multibody Systems and Mechatronics
El libro de actas recoge las aportaciones de los autores a travĂ©s de los correspondientes artĂculos a la Dinámica de Sistemas Multicuerpo y la MecatrĂłnica (Musme). Estas disciplinas se han convertido en una importante herramienta para diseñar máquinas, analizar prototipos virtuales y realizar análisis CAD sobre complejos sistemas mecánicos articulados multicuerpo. La dinámica de sistemas multicuerpo comprende un gran nĂşmero de aspectos que incluyen la mecánica, dinámica estructural, matemáticas aplicadas, mĂ©todos de control, ciencia de los ordenadores y mecatrĂłnica. Los artĂculos recogidos en el libro de actas están relacionados con alguno de los siguientes tĂłpicos del congreso:
Análisis y sĂntesis de mecanismos
; Diseño de algoritmos para sistemas mecatrónicos
; Procedimientos de simulaciĂłn y resultados
; Prototipos y rendimiento
; Robots y micromáquinas
; Validaciones experimentales
; TeorĂa de simulaciĂłn mecatrĂłnica
; Sistemas mecatrĂłnicos
; Control de sistemas mecatrónicosUniversitat Politècnica de València (2011). MUSME 2011 4 th International Symposium on Multibody Systems and Mechatronics. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/13224Archivo delegad
New Approach of Indoor and Outdoor Localization Systems
Accurate determination of the mobile position constitutes the basis of many new applications. This book provides a detailed account of wireless systems for positioning, signal processing, radio localization techniques (Time Difference Of Arrival), performances evaluation, and localization applications. The first section is dedicated to Satellite systems for positioning like GPS, GNSS. The second section addresses the localization applications using the wireless sensor networks. Some techniques are introduced for localization systems, especially for indoor positioning, such as Ultra Wide Band (UWB), WIFI. The last section is dedicated to Coupled GPS and other sensors. Some results of simulations, implementation and tests are given to help readers grasp the presented techniques. This is an ideal book for students, PhD students, academics and engineers in the field of Communication, localization & Signal Processing, especially in indoor and outdoor localization domains
Cumulative index to NASA Tech Briefs, 1986-1990, volumes 10-14
Tech Briefs are short announcements of new technology derived from the R&D activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. These briefs emphasize information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines and are issued to encourage commercial application. This cumulative index of Tech Briefs contains abstracts and four indexes (subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief number) and covers the period 1986 to 1990. The abstract section is organized by the following subject categories: electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, physical sciences, materials, computer programs, life sciences, mechanics, machinery, fabrication technology, and mathematics and information sciences
Understanding Quantum Technologies 2022
Understanding Quantum Technologies 2022 is a creative-commons ebook that
provides a unique 360 degrees overview of quantum technologies from science and
technology to geopolitical and societal issues. It covers quantum physics
history, quantum physics 101, gate-based quantum computing, quantum computing
engineering (including quantum error corrections and quantum computing
energetics), quantum computing hardware (all qubit types, including quantum
annealing and quantum simulation paradigms, history, science, research,
implementation and vendors), quantum enabling technologies (cryogenics, control
electronics, photonics, components fabs, raw materials), quantum computing
algorithms, software development tools and use cases, unconventional computing
(potential alternatives to quantum and classical computing), quantum
telecommunications and cryptography, quantum sensing, quantum technologies
around the world, quantum technologies societal impact and even quantum fake
sciences. The main audience are computer science engineers, developers and IT
specialists as well as quantum scientists and students who want to acquire a
global view of how quantum technologies work, and particularly quantum
computing. This version is an extensive update to the 2021 edition published in
October 2021.Comment: 1132 pages, 920 figures, Letter forma