47 research outputs found

    Mechatronic Systems

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    Mechatronics, the synergistic blend of mechanics, electronics, and computer science, has evolved over the past twenty five years, leading to a novel stage of engineering design. By integrating the best design practices with the most advanced technologies, mechatronics aims at realizing high-quality products, guaranteeing at the same time a substantial reduction of time and costs of manufacturing. Mechatronic systems are manifold and range from machine components, motion generators, and power producing machines to more complex devices, such as robotic systems and transportation vehicles. With its twenty chapters, which collect contributions from many researchers worldwide, this book provides an excellent survey of recent work in the field of mechatronics with applications in various fields, like robotics, medical and assistive technology, human-machine interaction, unmanned vehicles, manufacturing, and education. We would like to thank all the authors who have invested a great deal of time to write such interesting chapters, which we are sure will be valuable to the readers. Chapters 1 to 6 deal with applications of mechatronics for the development of robotic systems. Medical and assistive technologies and human-machine interaction systems are the topic of chapters 7 to 13.Chapters 14 and 15 concern mechatronic systems for autonomous vehicles. Chapters 16-19 deal with mechatronics in manufacturing contexts. Chapter 20 concludes the book, describing a method for the installation of mechatronics education in schools

    Haptics: Science, Technology, Applications

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    This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Human Haptic Sensing and Touch Enabled Computer Applications, EuroHaptics 2022, held in Hamburg, Germany, in May 2022. The 36 regular papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 129 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: haptic science; haptic technology; and haptic applications

    ISMCR 1994: Topical Workshop on Virtual Reality. Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Measurement and Control in Robotics

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    This symposium on measurement and control in robotics included sessions on: (1) rendering, including tactile perception and applied virtual reality; (2) applications in simulated medical procedures and telerobotics; (3) tracking sensors in a virtual environment; (4) displays for virtual reality applications; (5) sensory feedback including a virtual environment application with partial gravity simulation; and (6) applications in education, entertainment, technical writing, and animation

    The Shape of Damping: Optimizing Damping Coefficients to Improve Transparency on Bilateral Telemanipulation

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    This thesis presents a novel optimization-based passivity control algorithm for hapticenabled bilateral teleoperation systems involving multiple degrees of freedom. In particular, in the context of energy-bounding control, the contribution focuses on the implementation of a passivity layer for an existing time-domain scheme, ensuring optimal transparency of the interaction along subsets of the environment space which are preponderant for the given task, while preserving the energy bounds required for passivity. The involved optimization problem is convex and amenable to real-time implementation. The effectiveness of the proposed design is validated via an experiment performed on a virtual teleoperated environment. The interplay between transparency and stability is a critical aspect in haptic-enabled bilateral teleoperation control. While it is important to present the user with the true impedance of the environment, destabilizing factors such as time delays, stiff environments, and a relaxed grasp on the master device may compromise the stability and safety of the system. Passivity has been exploited as one of the the main tools for providing sufficient conditions for stable teleoperation in several controller design approaches, such as the scattering algorithm, timedomain passivity control, energy bounding algorithm, and passive set position modulation. In this work it is presented an innovative energy-based approach, which builds upon existing time-domain passivity controllers, improving and extending their effectiveness and functionality. The set of damping coefficients are prioritized in each degree of freedom, the resulting transparency presents a realistic force feedback in comparison to the other directions. Thus, the prioritization takes effect using a quadratic programming algorithm to find the optimal values for the damping. Finally, the energy tanks approach on passivity control is a solution used to ensure stability in a system for robotics bilateral manipulation. The bilateral telemanipulation must maintain the principle of passivity in all moments to preserve the system\u2019s stability. This work presents a brief introduction to haptic devices as a master component on the telemanipulation chain; the end effector in the slave side is a representation of an interactive object within an environment having a force sensor as feedback signal. The whole interface is designed into a cross-platform framework named ROS, where the user interacts with the system. Experimental results are presented

    Towards observable haptics: Novel sensors for capturing tactile interaction patterns

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    Kõiva R. Towards observable haptics: Novel sensors for capturing tactile interaction patterns. Bielefeld: Bielefeld University; 2014.Touch is one of the primary senses humans use when performing coordinated interaction, but the lack of a sense of touch in the majority of contemporary interactive technical systems, such as robots, which operate in non-deterministic environments, results in interactions that can at best be described as clumsy. Observing human haptics and extracting the salient information from the gathered data is not only relevant if we are to try to understand the involved underlying cognitive processes, but should also provide us with significant clues to design future intelligent interactive systems. Such systems could one day help to take the burden of tedious tasks off our hands in a similar fashion to how industrial robots revolutionized manufacturing. The aim of the work in this thesis was to provide significant advancements in tactile sensing technology, and thus move us a step closer to realizing this goal. The contributions contained herein can be broken into two major parts. The first part investigates capturing interaction patterns in humans with the goals of better understanding manual intelligence and improving the lives of hand amputees, while the second part is focused on augmenting technical systems with a sense of touch. tacTiles, a wireless tactile sensitive surface element attached to a deformable textile, was developed to capture human full-body interactions with large surfaces we come into contact with in our daily lives, such as floors, chairs, sofas or other furniture. The Tactile Dataglove, iObject and the Tactile Pen were developed especially to observe human manual intelligence. Whereas iObject allows motion sensing and a higher definition tactile signal to be captured than the Tactile Dataglove (220 tactile cells in the first iObject prototype versus 54 cells in the glove), the wearable glove makes haptic interactions with arbitrary objects observable. The Tactile Pen was designed to measure grip force during handwriting in order to better facilitate therapeutic treatment assessments. These sensors have already been extensively used by various research groups, including our own, to gain a better understanding of human manual intelligence. The Finger-Force-Linear-Sensor and the Tactile Bracelet are two novel sensors that were developed to facilitate more natural control of dexterous multi Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) hand prostheses. The Finger-Force-Linear-Sensor is a very accurate bidirectional single finger force ground-truth measurement device that was designed to enable testing and development of single finger forces and muscle activations mapping algorithms. The Tactile Bracelet was designed with the goal to provide a more robust and intuitive means of control for multi-DOF hand prostheses by measuring the muscle bulgings of the remnant muscles of lower arm amputees. It is currently in development and will eventually cover the complete forearm circumference with high spatial resolution tactile sensitive surfaces. An experiment involving a large number of lower arm amputees has already been planned. The Modular flat tactile sensor system, the Fabric-based touch sensitive artificial skin and the 3D shaped tactile sensor were developed to cover and to add touch sensing capabilities to the surfaces of technical systems. The rapid augmentation of systems with a sense of touch was the main goal of the modular flat tactile sensor system. The developed sensor modules can be used alone or in an array to form larger tactile sensitive surfaces such as tactile sensitive tabletops. As many robots have curved surfaces, using flat rigid modules severely limits the areas that can be covered with tactile sensors. The Fabric-based tactile sensor, originally developed to form a tactile dataglove for human hands, can with minor modifications also function as an artificial skin for technical systems. Finally, the 3D shaped tactile sensor based on Laser-Direct-Structuring technology is a novel tactile sensor that has a true 3D shape and provides high sensitivity and a high spatial resolution. These sensors take us further along the path towards creating general purpose technical systems that in time can be of great help to us in our daily lives. The desired tactile sensor characteristics differ significantly according to which haptic interaction patterns we wish to measure. Large tactile sensor arrays that are used to capture full body haptic interactions with floors and upholstered furniture, or that are designed to cover large areas of technical system surfaces, need to be scalable, have low power consumption and should ideally have a low material cost. Two examples of such sensors are tacTiles and the Fabric-based sensor for curved surfaces. At the other end of the tactile sensor development spectrum, if we want to observe manual interactions, high spatial and temporal resolution are crucial to enable the measurement of fine grasping and manipulation actions. Our fingertips contain the highest density area of mechanoreceptors, the organs that sense mechanical pressure and distortions. Thus, to construct biologically inspired anthropomorphic robotic hands, the artificial tactile sensors for the fingertips require similar high-fidelity sensors with surfaces that are curved under small bending radii in 2 dimensions, have high spatial densities, while simultaneously providing high sensitivity. With the fingertip tactile sensor, designed to fit the Shadow Robot Hands' fingers, I show that such sensors can indeed be constructed in the 3D-shaped high spatial resolution tactile sensor section of my thesis. With my work I have made a significant contribution towards making haptics more observable. I achieved this by developing a high number of novel tactile sensors that are usable, give a deeper insight into human haptic interactions, have great potential to help amputees and that make technical systems, such as robots, more capable

    Haptic Interaction with a Guide Robot in Zero Visibility

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    Search and rescue operations are often undertaken in dark and noisy environment in which rescue team must rely on haptic feedback for exploration and safe exit. However, little attention has been paid specifically to haptic sensitivity in such contexts or the possibility of enhancing communicational proficiency in the haptic mode as a life-preserving measure. The potential of root swarms for search and rescue has been shown by the Guardians project (EU, 2006-2010); however the project also showed the problem of human robot interaction in smoky (non-visibility) and noisy conditions. The REINS project (UK, 2011-2015) focused on human robot interaction in such conditions. This research is a body of work (done as a part of he REINS project) which investigates the haptic interaction of a person wit a guide robot in zero visibility. The thesis firstly reflects upon real world scenarios where people make use of the haptic sense to interact in zero visibility (such as interaction among firefighters and symbiotic relationship between visually impaired people and guide dogs). In addition, it reflects on the sensitivity and trainability of the haptic sense, to be used for the interaction. The thesis presents an analysis and evaluation of the design of a physical interface (Designed by the consortium of the REINS project) connecting the human and the robotic guide in poor visibility conditions. Finally, it lays a foundation for the design of test cases to evaluate human robot haptic interaction, taking into consideration the two aspects of the interaction, namely locomotion guidance and environmental exploration

    Musical Haptics

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    Haptic Musical Instruments; Haptic Psychophysics; Interface Design and Evaluation; User Experience; Musical Performanc

    Musical Haptics

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    Haptic Musical Instruments; Haptic Psychophysics; Interface Design and Evaluation; User Experience; Musical Performanc
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