An Integrated Design and Simulation Environment for Rapid Prototyping of Laminate Robotic Mechanisms

Laminate mechanisms are a reliable concept in producing lowcost robots for educational and commercial purposes. These mechanisms are produced using low-cost manufacturing techniques which have improved significantly during recent years and are more accessible to novices and hobbyists. However, iterating through the design space to come up with the best design for a robot is still a time consuming and rather expensive task and therefore, there is still a need for model-based analysis before manufacturing. Until now, there has been no integrated design and analysis software for laminate robots. This paper addresses some of the issues surrounding laminate analysis by introducing a companion to an existing laminate design tool that automates the generation of dynamic equations and produces simulation results via rendered plots and videos. We have validated the accuracy of the software by comparing the position, velocity and acceleration of the simulated mechanisms with the measurements taken from physical laminate prototypes using a motion capture system

Classifying the Capabilities of Robotic Systems. What is a robot?

There are various types of robots, yet there are no defined characteristics that relate them to each other. In order to compare robots, a detailed cross-domain classification system is required. The classification needs to be simple enough to be applicable to all robotic fields, yet comprehensive enough to capture robots accurately. The aim of the research reported in this thesis is to develop a novel classification scheme, subsequently named ‘ToRCH’ (Toward Robot CHaracterization), that categorizes robots according to their characteristics via a hierarchical structure. The layers of the hierarchy capture robot capabilities, sub-categorizes them and provides appropriate measurement levels. Some capabilities were adopted from the Multi-Annual Road map (MAR), that was developed to shape the European research development and innovation program, and the research reported in this thesis first extends MAR in a number of important dimensions. Then the study utilizes the extensive capability layers in ToRCH to characterize a robot’s performance in a form defined as the ‘Robot Capability Profile’ (RCP). The RCP helps in designing, developing, deploying and testing a robot for specific applications. It also facilitates the assessment of the best application that matches the specification of any particular robot. Finally, several aspects of ToRCH are evaluated including its structure, its usability and its generated RCPs. The results confirm that ToRCH is able to capture the capabilities of different robots in a way that could answer the question ‘what is a robot?’

Action Selection within short time windows

Cruse H, Schilling M. Action Selection within short time windows. In: Duff A, Prescott T, Verschure P, Lepora N, eds. Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems: Third International Conference, Living Machines 2014, Milan, Italy, July 30 – August 1, 2014. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science . Vol 8608. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing; 2014: 47-58