New Approaches in Automation and Robotics

The book New Approaches in Automation and Robotics offers in 22 chapters a collection of recent developments in automation, robotics as well as control theory. It is dedicated to researchers in science and industry, students, and practicing engineers, who wish to update and enhance their knowledge on modern methods and innovative applications. The authors and editor of this book wish to motivate people, especially under-graduate students, to get involved with the interesting field of robotics and mechatronics. We hope that the ideas and concepts presented in this book are useful for your own work and could contribute to problem solving in similar applications as well. It is clear, however, that the wide area of automation and robotics can only be highlighted at several spots but not completely covered by a single book

A Biomimetic steering robot for Minimally invasive surgery application

International audienceMinimally Invasive Surgery represents the future of many types of medical inter- ventions such as keyhole neurosurgey or transluminal endoscopic surgery. These procedures involve insertion of surgical instruments such as needles and endoscopes into human body through small incision/ body cavity for biopsy and drug delivery. However, nearly all surgical instruments for these procedures are inserted manually and there is a long learning curve for surgeons to use them properly. Many research efforts have been made to design active instruments (endoscope, needles) to improve this procedure during last decades. New robot mechanisms have been designed and used to improve the dexterity of current endoscope. Usually these robots are flexible and can pass the constrained space for fine manipulations. In recent years, a con- tinuum robotic mechanism has been investigated and designed for medical surgery. Those robots are characterized by the fact that their mechanical components do not have rigid links and discrete joints in contrast with traditional robot manipula- tors. The design of these robots is inspired by movements of natural animals such as tongues, elephant trunks and tentacles. The unusual compliance and redundant degrees of freedom of these robots provide strong potential to achieve delicate tasks successfully even in cluttered and unstructured environments. This chapter will present a complete application of a continuum robot for Mini- mally Invasive Surgery of colonoscopy. This system is composed of a micro-robotic tip, a set of position sensors and a real-time control system for guiding the explo- ration of colon. Details will be described on the modeling of the used pneumatic actuators, the design of the mechanical component, the kinematic model analysis and the control strategy for automatically guiding the progression of the device inside the human colon. Experimental results will be presented to check the perfor- mances of the whole system within a transparent tube

Modelling of servo-controlled pneumatic drives: a generalised approach to pneumatic modelling and applications in servo-drive design

The primary objective of this research is to develop a general modelling facility for modular pneumatic servo-drives. The component-oriented approach has been adopted as the modelling technique to provide the flexibility of modelling a wide variety of components and the segmentation of the non-linear system to less complex uncoupled component modules. A significant part of the research work has been devoted to identify a series of component modules of the single axis linear pneumatic servomechanism with standardised linking variables. The mathematical models have been implemented in a simulation software which produces time domain responses for design evaluation purposes. Alternative components for different servomechanism design were modelled as mutually exclusive modules which could be selected for assembly as if they were real physical entities. The philosophy of the approach was validated by tests on prototype servo-drives with matching components. Design analysis could be performed by simulating and comparing the performance of alternative system structures. [Continues.

A Study on Active/Passive Pneumatic Actuators for Assistive Systems

The need for intelligent assistive devices is growing. Due to advances in medicine, people are living longer and able to recover from severe neurological incidents, resulting in an increased population with neuromuscular weakness. In workplaces such as assembly lines, there is a high possibility of work-related fatigue or injury, such as when workers squat down or lift their arms during their work tasks. Assistive devices could help remedy loss of strength on their extremities as well as keep the work environment safe and productive, allowing these growing segments of the population in need of the devices to live more self-sufficient, productive, and higher-quality lives.In the design of assistive systems, an important design goal is prolonged operational time, which requires the minimum usage of energy. Energy consumption can be reduced by modifying the mechanical characteristics of assistive systems according to the dynamic characteristics of the human body, which vary considerably between tasks. This dissertation investigates 1) the design of actuators with adjustable mechanical impedance, 2) control strategies to search for, and adjust to, a suitable mechanical impedance for assistance and 3) sensing technologies for classifying the tasks in which the human engages.The first part of this dissertation characterizes a pneumatic variable stiffness actuator named an Active/Passive Pneumatic Actuator (AP2A). The actuator consists of an air cylinder and an array of solenoid valves. These valves and the corresponding switching algorithms tune the chamber pressures and make the AP2A function as a mechanical spring with desired stiffness. The actuator has a low mechanical impedance compared to geared motors, which enables it to achieve efficient interaction. Control strategies of an assistive system with the AP2A are discussed in the second part. This control framework utilizes the characteristics of the AP2A to provide assistance when necessary and to operate transparently (i.e., neither to assist nor to disturb the users) otherwise. Energy consumed by the AP2A and the assisted system is minimized by solving an optimal control problem. Finally, an estimator is introduced to detect assistive timing for the assistive system with the AP2A. This estimator utilizes physiological signals such as surface electromyogram and prior knowledge of a muscular model, classifying if the user is under the specified condition to be assisted by the AP2A. It demonstrates that the user's effort can be saved, also reducing the number of procedures to collect training data for the estimator before using assistive systems. The performance of the actuator, the controller, and the estimator proposed in this dissertation are verified through experiments.From the above, this dissertation contributes to developing the AP2A that provides assistance and saves energy usage of assistive systems by working as a mechanical spring with stiffness optimized for achieving effective interaction under specific conditions. This actuator supports assistive devices that can be deployed in the real world, properly assisting the users when needed

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

Advances in Robot Navigation

Robot navigation includes different interrelated activities such as perception - obtaining and interpreting sensory information; exploration - the strategy that guides the robot to select the next direction to go; mapping - the construction of a spatial representation by using the sensory information perceived; localization - the strategy to estimate the robot position within the spatial map; path planning - the strategy to find a path towards a goal location being optimal or not; and path execution, where motor actions are determined and adapted to environmental changes. This book integrates results from the research work of authors all over the world, addressing the abovementioned activities and analyzing the critical implications of dealing with dynamic environments. Different solutions providing adaptive navigation are taken from nature inspiration, and diverse applications are described in the context of an important field of study: social robotics