Feasibility study on robot off-line programming and simulation using matlab tools; simmechanics and simulink packages

Since 19th century, the development of robot in manufacturing industry have been increased rapidly, thus require the need to track down the historical development of robots by robot manufacturers that brings the robot function like todays. Due to demand, robot is said to be replacing human labour because of some factors such as its capability to do work effectively, reducing cost and task that human cannot do. In this research, a feasible study on robot off-line programming and simulation using MATLAB SimMechanics and Simulink packages will be the main objective. This project will be addressing about the development of robot modeling and simulation in the SimMechanics. It is aimed that this approach will be helping the academician and researchers in the related field because MATLAB is widely used in the world in various application. The result of this project shows that it is possible to do programming and 3D simulation using SimMechanics in order to obtain mechanical variables such as joint angle, angular acceleration, reaction force, and torque including draws the respective 3D robot motion that are programmed. SpaceLib program is then used to obtain the desired location and program each robot link to the respective coordinate system in matrix form

Modelling, Control and Optimization of Modular Reconfigurable Robots

Modular reconfigurable robots are robotic systems offering new opportunities to rapidly create fit-to-task flexible automation lines. The recent trends of increasingly varying market needs in low-volume high-mix manufacturing demands for highly adaptable robotic systems like this. In this context, methods for quickly and automatically generating a modular robot model and controller should be developed. Moreover, modularity and reconfigurabilty open up new opportunities for on-demand robot morphology optimization for varying tasks. Therefore a method to optimize the robot design for a certain criterion should be provided in order to exploit the full potential of reconfigurable robots. In this thesis, a complete hard- and software architecture for a modular reconfigurable EtherCAT-based robot is presented. This novel approach allows to automatically reconstruct the topology of different robot structures, composed of a set of body modules, each of which represents an EtherCAT slave. This approach enables to obtain in an automatic way the kinematic and dynamic model of the robot and store it in URDF format as soon as the physical robot is assembled or reconfigured. The method also automatically reshapes a generic optimization-based controller to be instantly used after reconfiguration. Finally, a study and analysis on how to find the best suited reconfigurable robot morphology for a given task are presented, starting from a fixed set of joint and link modules. In particular, is shown how exploiting multi-arm robotic systems and modifying the relative and absolute positions of their bases, can expand the solution space for a given task. Results obtained in simulations for different tasks, are verified with real-world experiments using a in-house developed reconfigurable robot prototype

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

Underwater Vehicles

For the latest twenty to thirty years, a significant number of AUVs has been created for the solving of wide spectrum of scientific and applied tasks of ocean development and research. For the short time period the AUVs have shown the efficiency at performance of complex search and inspection works and opened a number of new important applications. Initially the information about AUVs had mainly review-advertising character but now more attention is paid to practical achievements, problems and systems technologies. AUVs are losing their prototype status and have become a fully operational, reliable and effective tool and modern multi-purpose AUVs represent the new class of underwater robotic objects with inherent tasks and practical applications, particular features of technology, systems structure and functional properties

Bio-Inspired Robotics

Modern robotic technologies have enabled robots to operate in a variety of unstructured and dynamically-changing environments, in addition to traditional structured environments. Robots have, thus, become an important element in our everyday lives. One key approach to develop such intelligent and autonomous robots is to draw inspiration from biological systems. Biological structure, mechanisms, and underlying principles have the potential to provide new ideas to support the improvement of conventional robotic designs and control. Such biological principles usually originate from animal or even plant models, for robots, which can sense, think, walk, swim, crawl, jump or even fly. Thus, it is believed that these bio-inspired methods are becoming increasingly important in the face of complex applications. Bio-inspired robotics is leading to the study of innovative structures and computing with sensory–motor coordination and learning to achieve intelligence, flexibility, stability, and adaptation for emergent robotic applications, such as manipulation, learning, and control. This Special Issue invites original papers of innovative ideas and concepts, new discoveries and improvements, and novel applications and business models relevant to the selected topics of ``Bio-Inspired Robotics''. Bio-Inspired Robotics is a broad topic and an ongoing expanding field. This Special Issue collates 30 papers that address some of the important challenges and opportunities in this broad and expanding field