13,457 research outputs found
On Intrinsic Safety of Soft Robots
The rapidly growing field of soft robotics owes its success to the vast vistas of possibilities they promise. They may be utilized as standalone systems or work in harmony with the existing robotic technologies. Being based on soft and/or flexible materials, soft robots have usually high dexterity and, at the same time, they are also often considered "intrinsically safe." This is generally true and soft-bodied robots can be considered safer from a mechanical point of view, but this is sometimes improperly used. The identification of possible safety loopholes in soft robots is the subject of this paper. After a general overview of safety in robotics, we reported an overview of the main sources of unsafe conditions that may arise by the use of soft robotics technologies. Safety aspects are discussed in three categories: quasi-static, dynamic, and material failure. Some safety factors exclusive to soft robots such as whiplash-like effect and energy stored in highly strained elements are also introduced. Measures to avoid such unsafe conditions are presented such as establishing operational limits and introduction of inspection regimes and arrest systems
Decentralized Trajectory Tracking Control for Soft Robots Interacting With the Environment
Despite the classic nature of the problem, trajectory tracking for soft robots, i.e., robots with compliant elements deliberately introduced in their design, still presents several challenges. One of these is to design controllers which can obtain sufficiently high performance while preserving the physical characteristics intrinsic to soft robots. Indeed, classic control schemes using high-gain feedback actions fundamentally alter the natural compliance of soft robots effectively stiffening them, thus de facto defeating their main design purpose. As an alternative approach, we consider here using a low-gain feedback, while exploiting feedforward components. In order to cope with the complexity and uncertainty of the dynamics, we adopt a decentralized, iteratively learned feedforward action, combined with a locally optimal feedback control. The relative authority of the feedback and feedforward control actions adapts with the degree of uncertainty of the learned component. The effectiveness of the method is experimentally verified on several robotic structures and working conditions, including unexpected interactions with the environment, where preservation of softness is critical for safety and robustness
Medical image computing and computer-aided medical interventions applied to soft tissues. Work in progress in urology
Until recently, Computer-Aided Medical Interventions (CAMI) and Medical
Robotics have focused on rigid and non deformable anatomical structures.
Nowadays, special attention is paid to soft tissues, raising complex issues due
to their mobility and deformation. Mini-invasive digestive surgery was probably
one of the first fields where soft tissues were handled through the development
of simulators, tracking of anatomical structures and specific assistance
robots. However, other clinical domains, for instance urology, are concerned.
Indeed, laparoscopic surgery, new tumour destruction techniques (e.g. HIFU,
radiofrequency, or cryoablation), increasingly early detection of cancer, and
use of interventional and diagnostic imaging modalities, recently opened new
challenges to the urologist and scientists involved in CAMI. This resulted in
the last five years in a very significant increase of research and developments
of computer-aided urology systems. In this paper, we propose a description of
the main problems related to computer-aided diagnostic and therapy of soft
tissues and give a survey of the different types of assistance offered to the
urologist: robotization, image fusion, surgical navigation. Both research
projects and operational industrial systems are discussed
Computer- and robot-assisted Medical Intervention
Medical robotics includes assistive devices used by the physician in order to
make his/her diagnostic or therapeutic practices easier and more efficient.
This chapter focuses on such systems. It introduces the general field of
Computer-Assisted Medical Interventions, its aims, its different components and
describes the place of robots in that context. The evolutions in terms of
general design and control paradigms in the development of medical robots are
presented and issues specific to that application domain are discussed. A view
of existing systems, on-going developments and future trends is given. A
case-study is detailed. Other types of robotic help in the medical environment
(such as for assisting a handicapped person, for rehabilitation of a patient or
for replacement of some damaged/suppressed limbs or organs) are out of the
scope of this chapter.Comment: Handbook of Automation, Shimon Nof (Ed.) (2009) 000-00
Social Roles and Baseline Proxemic Preferences for a Domestic Service Robot
© The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. The work described in this paper was conducted within the EU Integrated Projects LIREC (LIving with Robots and intEractive Companions, funded by the European Commission under contract numbers FP7 215554, and partly funded by the ACCOMPANY project, a part of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement n287624The goal of our research is to develop socially acceptable behavior for domestic robots in a setting where a user and the robot are sharing the same physical space and interact with each other in close proximity. Specifically, our research focuses on approach distances and directions in the context of a robot handing over an object to a userPeer reviewe
Acceptability of the transitional wearable companion “+me” in typical children: a pilot study
This work presents the results of the first experimentation of +me-the first prototype of
Transitional Wearable Companion–run on 15 typically developed (TD) children with ages
between 8 and 34 months. +me is an interactive device that looks like a teddy bear that
can be worn around the neck, has touch sensors, can emit appealing lights and sounds,
and has input-output contingencies that can be regulated with a tablet via Bluetooth.
The participants were engaged in social play activities involving both the device and
an adult experimenter. +me was designed with the objective of exploiting its intrinsic
allure as an attractive toy to stimulate social interactions (e.g., eye contact, turn taking,
imitation, social smiles), an aspect potentially helpful in the therapy of Autism Spectrum
Disorders (ASD) and other Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD). The main purpose
of this preliminary study is to evaluate the general acceptability of the toy by TD children,
observing the elicited behaviors in preparation for future experiments involving children
with ASD and other PDD. First observations, based on video recording and scoring,
show that +me stimulates good social engagement in TD children, especially when their
age is higher than 24 months
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