On the Use of Magnets to Robustify the Motion Control of Soft Hands

In this letter, we propose a physics-based framework to exploit magnets in robotic manipulation. More specifically, we suggest equipping soft and underactuated hands with magnetic elements, which can generate a magnetic actuation able to synergistically interact with tendon-driven and pneumatic actuations, engendering a complementarity that enriches the capabilities of the actuation system. Magnetic elements can act as additional Degrees of Actuation (DoAs), robustifying the motion control of the device and augmenting the hand manipulation capabilities. We investigate the interaction of a soft hand with itself for enriching possible hand shaping, and the interaction of the hand with the environment for enriching possible grasping capabilities. Physics laws and notions reported in the manuscript can be used as a guidance for DoAs augmentation and can provide tools for the design of novel soft hands

Multi-contact Planning on Humans for Physical Assistance by Humanoid

International audienceFor robots to interact with humans in close proximity safely and efficiently, a specialized method to compute whole-body robot posture and plan contact locations is required. In our work, a humanoid robot is used as a caregiver that is performing a physical assistance task. We propose a method for formulating and initializing a non-linear optimization posture generation problem from an intuitive description of the assistance task and the result of a human point cloud processing. The proposed method allows to plan whole-body posture and contact locations on a task-specific surface of a human body, under robot equilibrium, friction cone, torque/joint limits, collision avoidance, and assistance task inherent constraints. The proposed framework can uniformly handle any arbitrary surface generated from point clouds, for autonomously planing the contact locations and interaction forces on potentially moving, movable, and deformable surfaces, which occur in direct physical human-robot interaction. We conclude the paper with examples of posture generation for physical human-robot interaction scenarios

Real Time Virtual Humans

The last few years have seen great maturation in the computation speed and control methods needed to portray 3D virtual humans suitable for real interactive applications. Various dimensions of real-time virtual humans are considered, such as appearance and movement, autonomous action, and skills such as gesture, attention, and locomotion. A virtual human architecture includes low level motor skills, mid-level PaT-Net parallel finite-state machine controller, and a high level conceptual action representation that can be used to drive virtual humans through complex tasks. This structure offers a deep connection between natural language instructions and animation control

Animation Control for Real-Time Virtual Humans

The computation speed and control methods needed to portray 3D virtual humans suitable for interactive applications have improved dramatically in recent years. Real-time virtual humans show increasingly complex features along the dimensions of appearance, function, time, autonomy, and individuality. The virtual human architecture we’ve been developing at the University of Pennsylvania is representative of an emerging generation of such architectures and includes low-level motor skills, a mid-level parallel automata controller, and a high-level conceptual representation for driving virtual humans through complex tasks. The architecture—called Jack— provides a level of abstraction generic enough to encompass natural-language instruction representation as well as direct links from those instructions to animation control

From cell to robot : A bio-inspired locomotion device

Bionics or biomimetics is an interdisciplinary research field, a scientific approach to applicate naturally developed biological systems, methods and solutions to the study and design of technology and engineering systems. Therefore bionics is based on an exclusive mutuality between life sciences and technology and its associated sciences, such as robotics. Robots are special artificial agents, and they have much in common with biological agents in case of the need to adapt to their environment. A popular trend in robotics is the development of soft robots – artificial agents with a rather flexible skin or shape, propulsing itself with some type of crawling movement. These robots are able to deform and adapt to obstacles during locomotion, which is an advantage over classical wheeled or legged propulsion. Bionics is helpful in developing locomotion devices for robots, e. g. bio-inspired climbing robots, such as geckobots, utilise the biological gecko adhesion model for climbing. Most of these bio-inspired climbing robots have the disadvantage of using legs for locomotion. The idea is to find a new biological model for a bionic robotic locomotion device that is using an adhesion-dependent crawling locomotion, which allows the robot to climb (or at least be able to master inclinations) and still has a rather soft and deformable shape providing the flexibility of adaptation to obstacles or a changing environment. Surprisingly, single cells, such as amoebae or animal tissue cells, provide these required properties: the ability to crawl on surfaces by formation of adhesion bonds and a very deformable shape – a perfect model for such robots. These cells are reorganising their cytoskeletal cortex and create a visco-elastic gradient which is polarising the cell with a sol-like "sloppy" leading edge at the front and a gel-like "stiff" rear end. This work demonstrates that it is possible to transfer the biophysical locomotion mechanism of cell migration to a simulation model of soft robots, which use an adhesion-dependent mechanism to autonomously create a polarising elasticity gradient during motion. It introduces and analyses three robot models, which are able to move on surfaces with different built-in integrations of this polarisation mechanism. Simulations show that the robots are flexible enough to adapt to changing environments, such as rough surfaces. One model is even able to crawl on walls and ceilings against the direction of gravity. Finally, this work offers some ideas for possible constructions and usability of these robots, and what insights their analysis might give into principles of biological cell migration

Climbing and Walking Robots

Nowadays robotics is one of the most dynamic fields of scientific researches. The shift of robotics researches from manufacturing to services applications is clear. During the last decades interest in studying climbing and walking robots has been increased. This increasing interest has been in many areas that most important ones of them are: mechanics, electronics, medical engineering, cybernetics, controls, and computers. Today’s climbing and walking robots are a combination of manipulative, perceptive, communicative, and cognitive abilities and they are capable of performing many tasks in industrial and non- industrial environments. Surveillance, planetary exploration, emergence rescue operations, reconnaissance, petrochemical applications, construction, entertainment, personal services, intervention in severe environments, transportation, medical and etc are some applications from a very diverse application fields of climbing and walking robots. By great progress in this area of robotics it is anticipated that next generation climbing and walking robots will enhance lives and will change the way the human works, thinks and makes decisions. This book presents the state of the art achievments, recent developments, applications and future challenges of climbing and walking robots. These are presented in 24 chapters by authors throughtot the world The book serves as a reference especially for the researchers who are interested in mobile robots. It also is useful for industrial engineers and graduate students in advanced study

Automation and Robotics: Latest Achievements, Challenges and Prospects

This SI presents the latest achievements, challenges and prospects for drives, actuators, sensors, controls and robot navigation with reverse validation and applications in the field of industrial automation and robotics. Automation, supported by robotics, can effectively speed up and improve production. The industrialization of complex mechatronic components, especially robots, requires a large number of special processes already in the pre-production stage provided by modelling and simulation. This area of research from the very beginning includes drives, process technology, actuators, sensors, control systems and all connections in mechatronic systems. Automation and robotics form broad-spectrum areas of research, which are tightly interconnected. To reduce costs in the pre-production stage and to reduce production preparation time, it is necessary to solve complex tasks in the form of simulation with the use of standard software products and new technologies that allow, for example, machine vision and other imaging tools to examine new physical contexts, dependencies and connections

Simulating Humans: Computer Graphics, Animation, and Control

People are all around us. They inhabit our home, workplace, entertainment, and environment. Their presence and actions are noted or ignored, enjoyed or disdained, analyzed or prescribed. The very ubiquitousness of other people in our lives poses a tantalizing challenge to the computational modeler: people are at once the most common object of interest and yet the most structurally complex. Their everyday movements are amazingly uid yet demanding to reproduce, with actions driven not just mechanically by muscles and bones but also cognitively by beliefs and intentions. Our motor systems manage to learn how to make us move without leaving us the burden or pleasure of knowing how we did it. Likewise we learn how to describe the actions and behaviors of others without consciously struggling with the processes of perception, recognition, and language