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

Advanced Mobile Robotics: Volume 3

Mobile robotics is a challenging field with great potential. It covers disciplines including electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, cognitive science, and social science. It is essential to the design of automated robots, in combination with artificial intelligence, vision, and sensor technologies. Mobile robots are widely used for surveillance, guidance, transportation and entertainment tasks, as well as medical applications. This Special Issue intends to concentrate on recent developments concerning mobile robots and the research surrounding them to enhance studies on the fundamental problems observed in the robots. Various multidisciplinary approaches and integrative contributions including navigation, learning and adaptation, networked system, biologically inspired robots and cognitive methods are welcome contributions to this Special Issue, both from a research and an application perspective

Soft pneumatic devices for blood circulation improvement

The research activity I am presenting in this thesis lies within the framework of a cooperation between the University of Cagliari (Applied Mechanics and Robotics lab, headed by professor Andrea Manuello Bertetto, and the research group of physicians referencing to professor Alberto Concu at the Laboratory of Sports Physiology, Department of Medical Sciences), and the Polytechnic of Turin (professor Carlo Ferraresi and his equipe at the Group of Automation and Robotics, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering) This research was also funded by the Italian Ministry of Research (MIUR – PRIN 2009). My activity has been mainly carried on at the Department of Mechanics, Robotics lab under the supervision of prof. Manuello; I have also spent one year at the Control Lab of the School of Electrical Engineering at Aalto University (Helsinki, Finland). The tests on the patients were taken at the Laboratory of Sports Physiology, Cagliari. I will be describing the design, development and testing of some soft pneumatic flexible devices meant to apply an intermittent massage and to restore blood circulation in lower limbs in order to improve cardiac output and wellness in general. The choice of the actuators, as well as the pneumatic circuits and air distribution system and PLC control patterns will be outlined. The trial run of the devices have been field--‐tested as soon a prototype was ready, so as to tune its features step--‐by--‐ step. I am also giving a characterization of a commercial thin force sensor after briefly reviewing some other type of thin pressure transducer. It has been used to gauge the contact pressure between the actuator and the subject’s skin in order to correlate the level of discomfort to the supply pressure, and to feed this value back to regulate the supply air flow. In order for the massage to be still effective without causing pain or distress or any cutoff to the blood flow, some control objective have been set, consisting in the regulation of the contact force so that it comes to the constant set point smoothly and its value holds constant until unloading occurs. The targets of such mechatronic devices range from paraplegic patients lacking of muscle tone because of their spinal cord damage, to elite endurance athletes needing a circulation booster when resting from practicing after serious injuries leading to bed rest. Encouraging results have been attained for both these two categories, based on the monitored hemodynamic variables

Modular soft pneumatic actuator system design for compliance matching

The future of robotics is personal. Never before has technology been as pervasive as it is today, with advanced mobile electronics hardware and multi-level network connectivity pushing âsmartâ devices deeper into our daily lives through home automation systems, virtual assistants, and wearable activity monitoring. As the suite of personal technology around us continues to grow in this way, augmenting and offloading the burden of routine activities of daily living, the notion that this trend will extend to robotics seems inevitable. Transitioning robots from their current principal domain of industrial factory settings to domestic, workplace, or public environments is not simply a matter of relocation or reprogramming, however. The key differences between âtraditionalâ types of robots and those which would best serve personal, proximal, human interactive applications demand a new approach to their design. Chief among these are requirements for safety, adaptability, reliability, reconfigurability, and to a more practical extent, usability. These properties frame the context and objectives of my thesis work, which seeks to provide solutions and answers to not only how these features might be achieved in personal robotic systems, but as well what benefits they can afford. I approach the investigation of these questions from a perspective of compliance matching of hardware systems to their applications, by providing methods to achieve mechanical attributes complimentary to their environment and end-use. These features are fundamental to the burgeoning field of Soft Robotics, wherein flexible, compliant materials are used as the basis for the structure, actuation, sensing, and control of complete robotic systems. Combined with pressurized air as a power source, soft pneumatic actuator (SPA) based systems offers new and novel methods of exploiting the intrinsic compliance of soft material components in robotic systems. While this strategy seems to answer many of the needs for human-safe robotic applications, it also brings new questions and challenges: What are the needs and applications personal robots may best serve? Are soft pneumatic actuators capable of these tasks, or âusefulâ work output and performance? How can SPA based systems be applied to provide complex functionality needed for operation in diverse, real-world environments? What are the theoretical and practical challenges in implementing scalable, multiple degrees of freedom systems, and how can they be overcome? I present solutions to these problems in my thesis work, elucidated through scientific design, testing and evaluation of robotic prototypes which leverage and demonstrate three key features: 1) Intrinsic compliance: provided by passive elastic and flexible component material properties, 2) Extrinsic compliance: rendered through high number of independent, controllable degrees of freedom, and 3) Complementary design: exhibited by modular, plug and play architectures which combine both attributes to achieve compliant systems. Through these core projects and others listed below I have been engaged in soft robotic technology, its application, and solutions to the challenges which are critical to providing a path forward within the soft robotics field, as well as for the future of personal robotics as a whole toward creating a better society

Естимација крутости и адаптивно управљање код попустљивих робота

Although there has been an astonishing increase in the development of nature- inspired robots equipped with compliant features,i.e.soft robots, their full potential has not been exploited yet. One aspect is that the soft robotics research has mainly focused on their position control only, whilest iffness is managed in open loop. Moreover, due to the difficulties of achieving consistent production of the actuation systems for soft articulated robots and the time-varyingnatureoftheirinternalflexibleelements,whicharesubjecttoplasticdeformation overtime,itiscurrentlyachallengetopreciselydeterminethejointstiffness. . In this regard, the thesis puts an emphasis on stiffness estimation and adaptive control for soft articulated robots driven by antagonistic Variable Stiffness Actuators (VSAs) with the aim to impose the desired dynamics of both position and stiffness, which would finally contribute to the overall safety and improved performance of a soft robot. By building upon Unknown Input Observer (UIO) theory, invasive and non-invasive solutions for estimation of stiffness in pneumatic and electro-mechanical actuators are proposed and in the latter case also experimentally validated. Beyond the linearity and scalability advantage, the approaches have an appealing feature that torque and velocity sensors are not needed. Once the stiffness is determined, innovative control approaches are introduced for soft articulated robots comprising an adaptive compensator and a dynamic decoupler. The solutions are able to cope with uncertainties of the robot dynamic model and, when the desired stiffness is constant or slowly-varying, also of the pneumatic actuator. Their verification is performed via simulations and then the pneumatic one is successfully tested on an experimental setup. Finally, the thesis shows via extensive simulations the effectiveness of adaptive technique ap- plied to soft-bodied robots, previously deriving the sufficient and necessary conditions for the controller convergence.Iako se danas izuzetno intenzivno radi na razvoju robota inspirisanih prirodom koje odlikuje elastična struktura, njihov puni potencijal jox uvek nije iskorišćen. Sa jedne strane, istraživanja u oblasti popustljivih robota su uglavnom fokusirana samo na upravljanje njihovom pozicijom, dok se krutost reguliše u otvorenoj sprezi. Pored toga, zbog poteškoća u postiznju konzistentne proizvodnje aktuatora i promenljive prirode njihovih elastičnih elemenata, koji su vremenom podlo_ni plastičnoj deformaciji, trenutno je izazov precizno odrediti krutost zglobova robota. U cilju doprinosa poboljšanja_u performansi i bezbednosti rada popustivih robota, teza prikazuje doprinos proceni krutosti i adaptivnog simultanog upravljanja pozicijom i krutosti antagonističkih aktuatora promenljive krutosti (VSA). Oslanjajući se na teoriju opservera nepoznatih ulaza (UIO), predložena su invazivna i neinvazivna rešenja za procenu krutosti u pneumatskim i elektromehaničkim aktuatorima i eksperimentalno verifikovana u slučaju druge grupe aktuatora. Pored linearnosti i skalabilnosti, ovi pristupi imaju privlaqnu osobinu da senzori momenta i brzine nisu potrebni. Teza predla_e inovativne sisteme upravljanja koji poseduju adaptivni kompenzator i dinamički dekupler. Predložene metode upravljanja demonstriraju mogućnost da kompenzuju nesigurnosti dinamičkog modela robota bez obzira da li je on pogođen električnim ili pneumatskim aktuatorima. Nakon simulacija, razvijeno upravljanje je verifikovano i na pneumatskom robotu. Na kraju teze, obimne simulacije pokazuju efikasnost adaptivne tehnike kada se primeni na robote sa fleksibilnim linkovima, prethodno izvodeći dovoljne i potrebne uslove za konvergenciju kontrolera

Volume 3 – Conference

We are pleased to present the conference proceedings for the 12th edition of the International Fluid Power Conference (IFK). The IFK is one of the world’s most significant scientific conferences on fluid power control technology and systems. It offers a common platform for the presentation and discussion of trends and innovations to manufacturers, users and scientists. The Chair of Fluid-Mechatronic Systems at the TU Dresden is organizing and hosting the IFK for the sixth time. Supporting hosts are the Fluid Power Association of the German Engineering Federation (VDMA), Dresdner Verein zur Förderung der Fluidtechnik e. V. (DVF) and GWT-TUD GmbH. The organization and the conference location alternates every two years between the Chair of Fluid-Mechatronic Systems in Dresden and the Institute for Fluid Power Drives and Systems in Aachen. The symposium on the first day is dedicated to presentations focused on methodology and fundamental research. The two following conference days offer a wide variety of application and technology orientated papers about the latest state of the art in fluid power. It is this combination that makes the IFK a unique and excellent forum for the exchange of academic research and industrial application experience. A simultaneously ongoing exhibition offers the possibility to get product information and to have individual talks with manufacturers. The theme of the 12th IFK is “Fluid Power – Future Technology”, covering topics that enable the development of 5G-ready, cost-efficient and demand-driven structures, as well as individual decentralized drives. Another topic is the real-time data exchange that allows the application of numerous predictive maintenance strategies, which will significantly increase the availability of fluid power systems and their elements and ensure their improved lifetime performance. We create an atmosphere for casual exchange by offering a vast frame and cultural program. This includes a get-together, a conference banquet, laboratory festivities and some physical activities such as jogging in Dresden’s old town.:Group 8: Pneumatics Group 9 | 11: Mobile applications Group 10: Special domains Group 12: Novel system architectures Group 13 | 15: Actuators & sensors Group 14: Safety & reliabilit

Remote-controlled ambidextrous robot hand actuated by pneumatic muscles: from feasibility study to design and control algorithms

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University LondonThis thesis relates to the development of the Ambidextrous Robot Hand engineered in Brunel University. Assigned to a robotic hand, the ambidextrous feature means that two different behaviours are accessible from a single robot hand, because of its fingers architecture which permits them to bend in both ways. On one hand, the robotic device can therefore behave as a right hand whereas, on another hand, it can behave as a left hand. The main contribution of this project is its ambidextrous feature, totally unique in robotics area. Moreover, the Ambidextrous Robot Hand is actuated by pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs), which are not commonly used to drive robot hands. The type of the actuators consequently adds more originality to the project. The primary challenge is to reach an ambidextrous behaviour using PAMs designed to actuate non-ambidextrous robot hands. Thus, a feasibility study is carried out for this purpose. Investigating a number of mechanical possibilities, an ambidextrous design is reached with features almost identical for its right and left sides. A testbench is thereafter designed to investigate this possibility even further to design ambidextrous fingers using 3D printing and an asymmetrical tendons routing engineered to reduce the number of actuators. The Ambidextrous Robot Hand is connected to a remote control interface accessible from its website, which provides video streaming as feedback, to be eventually used as an online rehabilitation device. The secondary main challenge is to implement control algorithms on a robot hand with a range twice larger than others, with an asymmetrical tendons routing and actuated by nonlinear actuators. A number of control algorithms are therefore investigated to interact with the angular displacement of the fingers and the grasping abilities of the hand. Several solutions are found out, notably the implementations of a phasing plane switch control and a sliding-mode control, both specific to the architecture of the Ambidextrous Robot Hand. The implementation of these two algorithms on a robotic hand actuated by PAMs is almost as innovative as the ambidextrous design of the mechanical structure itself