564 research outputs found
Oceanic Challenges to Technological Solutions : A Review of Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Path Technologies in Biomimicry, Control, Navigation, and Sensing
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) epitomize a revolutionary stride in underwater exploration, seamlessly assuming tasks once exclusive to manned vehicles. Their collaborative prowess within joint missions has inaugurated a new epoch of intricate applications in underwater domains. This study’s primary aim is to scrutinize recent technological advancements in AUVs and their role in navigating the complexities of underwater environments. Through a meticulous review of literature and empirical studies, this review synthesizes recent technological strides, spotlighting developments in biomimicry models, cutting-edge control systems, adaptive navigation algorithms, and pivotal sensor arrays crucial for exploring and mapping the ocean floor. The article meticulously delineates the profound impact of AUVs on underwater robotics, offering a comprehensive panorama of advancements and illustrating their far-reaching implications for underwater exploration and mapping. This review furnishes a holistic comprehension of the current landscape of AUV technology. This condensed overview furnishes a swift comparative analysis, aiding in discerning the focal points of each study while spotlighting gaps and intersections within the existing body of knowledge. It efficiently steers researchers toward complementary sources, enabling a focused examination and judicious allocation of time to the most pertinent studies. Furthermore, it functions as a blueprint for comprehensive studies within the AUV domain, pinpointing areas where amalgamating multiple sources would yield a more comprehensive understanding. By elucidating the purpose, employing a robust methodology, and anticipating comprehensive results, this study endeavors to serve as a cornerstone resource that not only encapsulates recent technological strides but also provides actionable insights and directions for advancing the field of underwater robotics.© 2024 The Authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed
Micro-motion controller
Micro-motions in surgical applications are small motions in the range of a few millimeters and are common in ophthalmic surgery, neurosurgery, and other surgeries which require precise manipulation over short distances. Robotic surgery is replacing traditional open surgery at a rapid pace due to the obvious health benefits, however, most of the robotic surgical tools use robotic motion controllers that are designed to work over a large portion of the human body, thus involving motion of the entire human arm at shoulder joint. This requirement to move a large inertial mass results in undesirable, unwanted, and imprecise motion. This senior design project has created a 2-axis micro-motion “capable” platform, where the device studies the most common linear, 2-D surgical micro-motion of pinched human fingers in a damped and un-damped state. Through a system of printed and modeled parts in combination with motors and encoders a microsurgical controller was developed which can provide location-based output on a screen. Mechanical damping was introduced to research potential stability of micro-motion in any surgeon’s otherwise unsteady hand. The device is to also serve as a starter set for future biomedical device research projects in Santa Clara University’s bioengineering department. Further developments in the microsurgical controller such as further scaling, addition of a third axis, haptic feedback through the microcontroller, and component encasing to allow productization for use on an industrial robotic surgical device for clinical applications
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
Recent Advancements in Augmented Reality for Robotic Applications: A Survey
Robots are expanding from industrial applications to daily life, in areas such as medical robotics, rehabilitative robotics, social robotics, and mobile/aerial robotics systems. In recent years, augmented reality (AR) has been integrated into many robotic applications, including medical, industrial, human–robot interactions, and collaboration scenarios. In this work, AR for both medical and industrial robot applications is reviewed and summarized. For medical robot applications, we investigated the integration of AR in (1) preoperative and surgical task planning; (2) image-guided robotic surgery; (3) surgical training and simulation; and (4) telesurgery. AR for industrial scenarios is reviewed in (1) human–robot interactions and collaborations; (2) path planning and task allocation; (3) training and simulation; and (4) teleoperation control/assistance. In addition, the limitations and challenges are discussed. Overall, this article serves as a valuable resource for working in the field of AR and robotic research, offering insights into the recent state of the art and prospects for improvement
Agricultural Structures and Mechanization
In our globalized world, the need to produce quality and safe food has increased exponentially in recent decades to meet the growing demands of the world population. This expectation is being met by acting at multiple levels, but mainly through the introduction of new technologies in the agricultural and agri-food sectors. In this context, agricultural, livestock, agro-industrial buildings, and agrarian infrastructure are being built on the basis of a sophisticated design that integrates environmental, landscape, and occupational safety, new construction materials, new facilities, and mechanization with state-of-the-art automatic systems, using calculation models and computer programs. It is necessary to promote research and dissemination of results in the field of mechanization and agricultural structures, specifically with regard to farm building and rural landscape, land and water use and environment, power and machinery, information systems and precision farming, processing and post-harvest technology and logistics, energy and non-food production technology, systems engineering and management, and fruit and vegetable cultivation systems. This Special Issue focuses on the role that mechanization and agricultural structures play in the production of high-quality food and continuously over time. For this reason, it publishes highly interdisciplinary quality studies from disparate research fields including agriculture, engineering design, calculation and modeling, landscaping, environmentalism, and even ergonomics and occupational risk prevention
From Flies to Robots: Inverted Landing in Small Quadcopters with Dynamic Perching
Inverted landing is a routine behavior among a number of animal fliers.
However, mastering this feat poses a considerable challenge for robotic fliers,
especially to perform dynamic perching with rapid body rotations (or flips) and
landing against gravity. Inverted landing in flies have suggested that optical
flow senses are closely linked to the precise triggering and control of body
flips that lead to a variety of successful landing behaviors. Building upon
this knowledge, we aimed to replicate the flies' landing behaviors in small
quadcopters by developing a control policy general to arbitrary
ceiling-approach conditions. First, we employed reinforcement learning in
simulation to optimize discrete sensory-motor pairs across a broad spectrum of
ceiling-approach velocities and directions. Next, we converted the
sensory-motor pairs to a two-stage control policy in a continuous
augmented-optical flow space. The control policy consists of a first-stage
Flip-Trigger Policy, which employs a one-class support vector machine, and a
second-stage Flip-Action Policy, implemented as a feed-forward neural network.
To transfer the inverted-landing policy to physical systems, we utilized domain
randomization and system identification techniques for a zero-shot sim-to-real
transfer. As a result, we successfully achieved a range of robust
inverted-landing behaviors in small quadcopters, emulating those observed in
flies.Comment: 17 pages, 19 Figures, Journal paper currently under revie
Impact of Ear Occlusion on In-Ear Sounds Generated by Intra-oral Behaviors
We conducted a case study with one volunteer and a recording setup to detect sounds induced by the actions: jaw clenching, tooth grinding, reading, eating, and drinking. The setup consisted of two in-ear microphones, where the left ear was semi-occluded with a commercially available earpiece and the right ear was occluded with a mouldable silicon ear piece. Investigations in the time and frequency domains demonstrated that for behaviors such as eating, tooth grinding, and reading, sounds could be recorded with both sensors. For jaw clenching, however, occluding the ear with a mouldable piece was necessary to enable its detection. This can be attributed to the fact that the mouldable ear piece sealed the ear canal and isolated it from the environment, resulting in a detectable change in pressure. In conclusion, our work suggests that detecting behaviors such as eating, grinding, reading with a semi-occluded ear is possible, whereas, behaviors such as clenching require the complete occlusion of the ear if the activity should be easily detectable. Nevertheless, the latter approach may limit real-world applicability because it hinders the hearing capabilities.</p
OBJECT PERCEPTION IN UNDERWATER ENVIRONMENTS: A SURVEY ON SENSORS AND SENSING METHODOLOGIES
Underwater robots play a critical role in the marine industry. Object perception is the foundation for the automatic
operations of submerged vehicles in dynamic aquatic environments. However, underwater perception
encounters multiple environmental challenges, including rapid light attenuation, light refraction, or backscattering
effect. These problems reduce the sensing devices’ signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), making underwater
perception a complicated research topic. This paper describes the state-of-the-art sensing technologies and
object perception techniques for underwater robots in different environmental conditions. Due to the current
sensing modalities’ various constraints and characteristics, we divide the perception ranges into close-range,
medium-range, and long-range. We survey and describe recent advances for each perception range and suggest
some potential future research directions worthy of investigating in this field
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