A simple upper limb rehabilitation trainer

Stroke is a leading cause of disability which can affect shoulder and elbow movements which are necessary for reaching activities in numerous daily routines. To maximize functional recovery of these movements, stroke survivors undergo rehabilitation sessions under the supervision of physiotherapists in healthcare settings. Unfortunately, these sessions may be limited due to staff constraints and are often labor-intensive. There are numerous robotic devices which have been developed to overcome this problem. However, the high cost of these robots is a major concern as it limits their cost-benefit profiles, thus impeding large scale implementation. This paper presents a simple and low cost interactive training module for the purpose of upper limb rehabilitation. The module, which uses a conventional mouse integrated with a small DC motor to generate vibration instead of any robotic actuator, is integrated with a game-like virtual reality system intended for training shoulder and elbow movements. Three games for the module were developed as training platforms, namely: Triangle, Square and Circle games. Results from five healthy study subjects showed that their performances improved with practice and time taken to complete the Triangle game was the fastest of the three

Mechanical Description of a Hyper-Redundant Robot Joint Mechanism Used for a Design of a Biomimetic Robotic Fish

A biologically inspired robot in the form of fish (mackerel) model using rubber (as the biomimetic material) for its hyper-redundant joint is presented in this paper. Computerized simulation of the most critical part of the model (the peduncle) shows that the rubber joints will be able to take up the stress that will be created. Furthermore, the frequency-induced softening of the rubber used was found to be critical if the joints are going to oscillate at frequency above 25 Hz. The robotic fish was able to attain a speed of 0.985 m/s while the tail beats at a maximum of 1.7 Hz when tested inside water. Furthermore, a minimum turning radius of 0.8 m (approximately 2 times the fish body length) was achieved

Design of a rescue robot for search and mapping operation

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Izmir, 2006Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 65-66)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishx, 76 leavesThe aim of this thesis is to design a mobile robot for rescue operations after an earthquake. The robot is designed to locate injured victims and life triangle in debris, to create a map of the disaster area and to collect the necessary information needed by digging and support robots in order to the database center. This robot enables us to rescue the victim in the shortest time with minimum injury. This will let us risking the lives of the rescue teams much less as well as rescuing much more victim alive.Robot is designed with the longitudinal body design. Shock absorber system gives the damper effect against falls as well as adding advanced equilibrium properties while passing through a rough land. Driving mechanism is a tracked steering system.Front and back arm system is developed to provide high mobility while overtaking the obstacles.Secondly hovercraft type robot, which works with the cushion pressure principle, is designed as a rescue robot. It is thought that if the adequate height is supplied, the robot could manage to overcome obstacles.As a third design, ball robot, which could easily move uphill and has a capability to overrun obstacles, is studied.Jumping mechanism will be working by magnetic piston.In addition robot is equipped with the sensors so that it has capable of the navigation. In order to achieve feasible sensor systems, all electronic components are evaluated and the most effective sensors are chosen

Sensor System for Rescue Robots

A majority of rescue worker fatalities are a result of on-scene responses. Existing technologies help assist the first responders in scenarios of no light, and there even exist robots that can navigate radioactive areas. However, none are able to be both quickly deployable and enter hard to reach or unsafe areas in an emergency event such as an earthquake or storm that damages a structure. In this project we created a sensor platform system to augment existing robotic solutions so that rescue workers can search for people in danger while avoiding preventable injury or death and saving time and resources. Our results showed that we were able to map out a 2D map of the room with updates for robot motion on a display while also showing a live thermal image in front of the system. The system is also capable of taking a digital picture from a triggering event and then displaying it on the computer screen. We discovered that data transfer plays a huge role in making different programs like Arduino and Processing interact with each other. Consequently, this needs to be accounted for when improving our project. In particular our project is wired right now but should deliver data wirelessly to be of any practical use. Furthermore, we dipped our feet into SLAM technologies and if our project were to become autonomous, more research into the algorithms would make this autonomy feasible

Development and Control of Articulated Mobile Robot for Climbing Steep Stairs

In this paper, we develop an articulated mobile robot that can climb stairs, and also move in narrow spaces and on 3-D terrain. This paper presents two control methods for this robot. The first is a 3-D steering method that is used to adapt the robot to the surrounding terrain. In this method, the robot relaxes its joints, allowing it to adapt to the terrain using its own weight, and then, resumes its motion employing the follow-the-leader method. The second control method is the semi-autonomous stair climbing method. In this method, the robot connects with the treads of the stairs using a body called a connecting part, and then shifts the connecting part from its head to its tail. The robot then uses the sensor information to shift the connecting part with appropriate timing. The robot can climb stairs using this method even if the stairs are steep, and the sizes of the riser and the tread of the stairs are unknown. Experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods and the developed robot

Range-Sensor-Based Semiautonomous Whole-Body Collision Avoidance of a Snake Robot

This brief presents a control system for a snake robot based on range sensor data that semiautonomously aids the robot in avoiding collisions with obstacles. In the proposed system, an operator indicates the desired velocity of the first link of the robot using a joystick, and the joint input which accomplishes both the desired velocity of the first link and collision avoidance between subsequent links and obstacles is automatically calculated by the controller, which selects the links needed to be grounded and exploits redundancy. The controller uses real-time data from range sensors for obstacle positions. The experimental system, which has range sensors and the function generating environmental map using simultaneous localization and mapping, was developed with decreasing calculation cost, and experiments were performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system in unknown environments

Sound source localization through shape reconfiguration in a snake robot

This paper describes a snake robot system that uses sound source localization. We show in this paper as to how we can localize a sound source in 3D and solve the classic forward backward problem in sound source localization using minimum number of audio sensors by using the multiple degrees of freedom of the snake robot. We describe the hardware and software architecture of the robot and show the results of several sound tracking experiments we did with our snake robot. We also present biologically inspired sound tracking behavior in different postures of a biological snake robot as "Digital Snake Charming"

Robotics Horizon

The Rt Hon David Willets, minister for Universities and Science identified the importance of Robotics and Autonomous Systems as a general technology: 'Robots acting independently of human control - which can learn, adapt and take decisions - will revolutionise our economy and society over the next 20 years' (Willetts 2013). The current report has the focus on the societal aspect of this revolution and briefly sets out the landscape of current and future robotic systems applied in everyday human life and offers a brief overview of what robotics currently is and might be about in the future. The report includes contributions from across the UK robotics community (though completeness is not claimed).The emphasis is on the application of robots operating in the vicinity of human beings that can learn, adapt and take decisions. However, the underlying enabling technologies such as machine vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence are not discussed separately