Robolink: Modular Robot Arm

The goal of this project is to utilize the igus® Robolink arm five degree of freedom modular robot arm, to complete useful tasks for persons with no or limited mobility. These tasks include driving the joystick of a wheelchair, flipping a light switch, and turning the pages of a book. This is done through designing and building a modular interface for mounting the Robolink arm onto an existing wheelchair project and implementing a universal control interface in the software for future expansion of tasks and control methods

Mechatronic Systems

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

Mobile Robots Navigation

Mobile robots navigation includes different interrelated activities: (i) perception, as obtaining and interpreting sensory information; (ii) exploration, as the strategy that guides the robot to select the next direction to go; (iii) mapping, involving the construction of a spatial representation by using the sensory information perceived; (iv) localization, as the strategy to estimate the robot position within the spatial map; (v) path planning, as the strategy to find a path towards a goal location being optimal or not; and (vi) path execution, where motor actions are determined and adapted to environmental changes. The book addresses those activities by integrating results from the research work of several authors all over the world. Research cases are documented in 32 chapters organized within 7 categories next described

Explainable shared control in assistive robotics

Shared control plays a pivotal role in designing assistive robots to complement human capabilities during everyday tasks. However, traditional shared control relies on users forming an accurate mental model of expected robot behaviour. Without this accurate mental image, users may encounter confusion or frustration whenever their actions do not elicit the intended system response, forming a misalignment between the respective internal models of the robot and human. The Explainable Shared Control paradigm introduced in this thesis attempts to resolve such model misalignment by jointly considering assistance and transparency. There are two perspectives of transparency to Explainable Shared Control: the human's and the robot's. Augmented reality is presented as an integral component that addresses the human viewpoint by visually unveiling the robot's internal mechanisms. Whilst the robot perspective requires an awareness of human "intent", and so a clustering framework composed of a deep generative model is developed for human intention inference. Both transparency constructs are implemented atop a real assistive robotic wheelchair and tested with human users. An augmented reality headset is incorporated into the robotic wheelchair and different interface options are evaluated across two user studies to explore their influence on mental model accuracy. Experimental results indicate that this setup facilitates transparent assistance by improving recovery times from adverse events associated with model misalignment. As for human intention inference, the clustering framework is applied to a dataset collected from users operating the robotic wheelchair. Findings from this experiment demonstrate that the learnt clusters are interpretable and meaningful representations of human intent. This thesis serves as a first step in the interdisciplinary area of Explainable Shared Control. The contributions to shared control, augmented reality and representation learning contained within this thesis are likely to help future research advance the proposed paradigm, and thus bolster the prevalence of assistive robots.Open Acces

Mobile Robots

The objective of this book is to cover advances of mobile robotics and related technologies applied for multi robot systems' design and development. Design of control system is a complex issue, requiring the application of information technologies to link the robots into a single network. Human robot interface becomes a demanding task, especially when we try to use sophisticated methods for brain signal processing. Generated electrophysiological signals can be used to command different devices, such as cars, wheelchair or even video games. A number of developments in navigation and path planning, including parallel programming, can be observed. Cooperative path planning, formation control of multi robotic agents, communication and distance measurement between agents are shown. Training of the mobile robot operators is very difficult task also because of several factors related to different task execution. The presented improvement is related to environment model generation based on autonomous mobile robot observations

Admittance control of the intelligent assist robot manipulator for people with duchenne muscular dystrophy

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a neuromuscular disease with a prevalence of 1 in 3500 male births, results in characteristic muscle weakness which is progressive with age and leads to loss of independence. And, in this population, maintaining optimal quality of life depends on the preservation of self-sufficiency. Despite the loss of function, non-ambulant people with DMD retain some muscle strength, just not sufficient strength to overcome the force of gravity. There are a number of upper-limb passive and active orthotic devices that attempt to augment the loss of upper limb function in people with DMD by taking advantage of this residual muscle strength by providing anti-gravity assistance. The majority of these devices, as well as currently available robotic manipulators, are considerably limited in the functionality that they provide, rendering them obtrusive and unaccommodating, resulting in lack of use by this population. This thesis presents the design of a novel upper limb assistive robotic device. This design involves the use of admittance control as the interface for the intelligent Assist Robot Manipulator (iARM). A thorough qualitative and quantitative analysis of the prototype is performed, the results of which are presented. The quantitative analysis focuses on the ideal delay that is required of human-machine interfaces to ensure comfort and passivity. Additionally, potential contributors to the delay of the iARM are investigated

A gaze-contingent framework for perceptually-enabled applications in healthcare

Patient safety and quality of care remain the focus of the smart operating room of the future. Some of the most influential factors with a detrimental effect are related to suboptimal communication among the staff, poor flow of information, staff workload and fatigue, ergonomics and sterility in the operating room. While technological developments constantly transform the operating room layout and the interaction between surgical staff and machinery, a vast array of opportunities arise for the design of systems and approaches, that can enhance patient safety and improve workflow and efficiency. The aim of this research is to develop a real-time gaze-contingent framework towards a "smart" operating suite, that will enhance operator's ergonomics by allowing perceptually-enabled, touchless and natural interaction with the environment. The main feature of the proposed framework is the ability to acquire and utilise the plethora of information provided by the human visual system to allow touchless interaction with medical devices in the operating room. In this thesis, a gaze-guided robotic scrub nurse, a gaze-controlled robotised flexible endoscope and a gaze-guided assistive robotic system are proposed. Firstly, the gaze-guided robotic scrub nurse is presented; surgical teams performed a simulated surgical task with the assistance of a robot scrub nurse, which complements the human scrub nurse in delivery of surgical instruments, following gaze selection by the surgeon. Then, the gaze-controlled robotised flexible endoscope is introduced; experienced endoscopists and novice users performed a simulated examination of the upper gastrointestinal tract using predominately their natural gaze. Finally, a gaze-guided assistive robotic system is presented, which aims to facilitate activities of daily living. The results of this work provide valuable insights into the feasibility of integrating the developed gaze-contingent framework into clinical practice without significant workflow disruptions.Open Acces

Nonlinear Control Synthesis for Facilitation of Human-Robot Interaction

Human-robot interaction is an area of interest that is becoming increasingly important in robotics research. Nonlinear control design techniques allow researchers to guarantee stability, performance, as well as safety, especially in cases involving physical human-robot interaction (PHRI). In this dissertation, we will propose two different nonlinear controllers and detail the design of an assistive robotic system to facilitate human-robot interaction. In Chapter 2, to facilitate physical human-robot interaction, the problem of making a safe compliant contact between a human and an assistive robot is considered. Users with disabilities have a need to utilize their assistive robots for physical interaction during activities such as hair-grooming, scratching, face-sponging, etc. Specifically, we propose a hybrid force/velocity/attitude control for our physical human-robot interaction system which is based on measurements from a force/torque sensor mounted on the robot wrist. While automatically aligning the end-effector surface with the unknown environmental (human) surface, a desired commanded force is applied in the normal direction while following desired velocity commands in the tangential directions. A Lyapunov based stability analysis is provided to prove both convergence as well as passivity of the interaction to ensure both performance and safety. Simulation as well as experimental results verify the performance and robustness of the proposed hybrid force/velocity/attitude controller in the presence of dynamic uncertainties as well as safety compliance of human-robot interactions for a redundant robot manipulator. Chapter 3 presents the design, analysis, and experimental implementation of an adaptive control enabled intelligent algorithm to facilitate 1-click grasping of novel objects by a robotic gripper since one of the most common types of tasks for an assistive robot is pick and place/object retrieval tasks. But there are a variety of objects in our daily life all of which need different optimal force to grasp them. This algorithm facilitates automated grasping force adjustment. The use of object-geometry free modeling coupled with utilization of interaction force and slip velocity measurements allows for the design of an adaptive backstepping controller that is shown to be asymptotically stable via a Lyapunov-based analysis. Experiments with multiple objects using a prototype gripper with embedded sensing show that the proposed scheme is able to effectively immobilize novel objects within the gripper fingers. Furthermore, it is seen that the adaptation allows for close estimation of the minimum grasp force required for safe grasping which results in minimal deformation of the grasped object. In Chapter 4, we present the design and implementation of the motion controller and adaptive interface for the second generation of the UCF-MANUS intelligent assistive robotic manipulator system. Based on usability testing for the system, several features were implemented in the interface that could reduce the complexity of the human-robot interaction while also compensating for the deficits in different human factors, such as Working Memory, Response Inhibition, Processing Speed; , Depth Perception, Spatial Ability, Contrast Sensitivity. For the controller part, we designed several new features to provide the user has a less complex and safer interaction with the robot, such as \u27One-click mode\u27, \u27Move suggestion mode\u27 and \u27Gripper Control Assistant\u27. As for the adaptive interface design, we designed and implemented compensators such as \u27Contrast Enhancement\u27, \u27Object Proximity Velocity Reduction\u27 and \u27Orientation Indicator\u27

Robot Manipulators

Robot manipulators are developing more in the direction of industrial robots than of human workers. Recently, the applications of robot manipulators are spreading their focus, for example Da Vinci as a medical robot, ASIMO as a humanoid robot and so on. There are many research topics within the field of robot manipulators, e.g. motion planning, cooperation with a human, and fusion with external sensors like vision, haptic and force, etc. Moreover, these include both technical problems in the industry and theoretical problems in the academic fields. This book is a collection of papers presenting the latest research issues from around the world