Active stability observer using artificial neural network for intuitive physical human–robot interaction

Physical human-robot interaction may present an obstacle to transparency and operations’ intuitiveness. This barrier could occur due to the vibrations caused by a stiff environment interacting with the robotic mechanisms. In this regard, this paper aims to deal with the aforementioned issues while using an observer and an adaptive gain controller. The adaptation of the gain loop should be performed in all circumstances in order to maintain operators’ safety and operations’ intuitiveness. Hence, two approaches for detecting and then reducing vibrations will be introduced in this study as follows: 1) a statistical analysis of a sensor signal (force and velocity) and 2) a multilayer perceptron artificial neural network capable of compensating the first approach for ensuring vibrations identification in real time. Simulations and experimental results are then conducted and compared in order to evaluate the validity of the suggested approaches in minimizing vibrations

Energy-Consistent Haptic Rendering of Contact Forces

Abstract-Enhancing the realism of the perceived contact force is a primary challenge in haptic rendering of virtual walls (VWs) and objects (VOs). For VOs, this goal directly translates into accurate rendering of not only stiffness, but also mass. The most challenging situation arises when the stiffness of the object is large, its mass is small, and sampling is slow. To address this challenge, a framework entitled highfidelity haptic rendering (HFCR) has been developed. The HFCR framework is composed of the following three main strategies: an energy-consistent rendering of the contact force, smooth transition between contact modes, and remaining leak dissipation. The essence of all these strategies is to make the energy of the VO emulate its continuous-time counterpart. This is achieved through physically meaningful modifications in the constitutive relations to suppress artificial energy leaks. This paper reports simulation and experiments involving the onedimensional canonical model of a VO to illustrate the HFCR framework and compare it to the existing methods. Results demonstrate the promising stability and force rendering fidelity of this framework

Haptics: state of the art survey

This paper presents a novel approach to the understanding of Haptic and its related fields where haptics is used extensively like in display systems, communication, different types of haptic devices, and interconnection of haptic displays where virtual environment should feel like equivalent physical systems. There have been escalating research interests on areas relating to haptic modality in recent years, towards multiple fields. However, there seems to be limited studies in determining the various subfields and interfacing and related information on haptic user interfaces and its influence on the fields mentioned. This paper aims to bring forth the theory behind the essence of Haptics and its Subfields like haptic interfaces and its applications

Haptics in Robot-Assisted Surgery: Challenges and Benefits

Robotic surgery is transforming the current surgical practice, not only by improving the conventional surgical methods but also by introducing innovative robot-enhanced approaches that broaden the capabilities of clinicians. Being mainly of man-machine collaborative type, surgical robots are seen as media that transfer pre- and intra-operative information to the operator and reproduce his/her motion, with appropriate filtering, scaling, or limitation, to physically interact with the patient. The field, however, is far from maturity and, more critically, is still a subject of controversy in medical communities. Limited or absent haptic feedback is reputed to be among reasons that impede further spread of surgical robots. In this paper objectives and challenges of deploying haptic technologies in surgical robotics is discussed and a systematic review is performed on works that have studied the effects of providing haptic information to the users in major branches of robotic surgery. It has been tried to encompass both classical works and the state of the art approaches, aiming at delivering a comprehensive and balanced survey both for researchers starting their work in this field and for the experts

Conception, réalisation et évaluation d’une commande robotique interactive et d’un guide haptique interfacé par la technologie réalité augmentée dédiés à l’interaction physique humain-robot

Depuis quelques décennies, nous témoignons une progression significative des systèmes interactifs tels que les robots agissant en coopération avec l’humain. Ces derniers ont fait leurs preuves dans l’amélioration de la compétitivité des industries. Ceci est rendu possible grâce à leur potentiel à augmenter les performances humaines et à favoriser une plus grande flexibilité tout en laissant le processus décisionnel à l’opérateur. Une telle amélioration est obtenue grâce à une synergie efficace entre l’intelligence des humains, leurs connaissances, leurs dextérités et la force des robots industriels, leurs endurances et leurs précisions. En outre, l’interactivité robotique permet d’assister les humains dans des tâches dangereuses et difficiles. De plus, elle permet d’améliorer et d’éviter les postures inadéquates, pouvant provoquer des douleurs musculo-squelettiques, grâce à un ordonnancement optimal des activités de production et de fabrication. Ainsi, ces deux avantages pourraient réduire le développement des troubles musculo-squelettiques (TMS). D’ailleurs, l’utilisation d’un robot dans une cellule de travail hybride, dans le but de remplacer une tâche répétitive caractérisée par une posture contraignante, pourrait avoir l’avantage de réduire le développement des TMS grâce à un partage adapté des activités de production. Par conséquent, les travaux de ce projet de recherche sont encadrés par une grande problématique qui est la réduction des TMS, dus à des postures contraignantes, grâce à un robot interactif. En effet, les symptômes dus aux TMS constituent, aujourd’hui, l’une des questions les plus préoccupantes en santé et en sécurité au travail du fait de leur forte prévalence et de leurs conséquences tant sur la santé des individus que sur le fonctionnement des entreprises. D’ailleurs, d’après les statistiques, près de 15 % de l’ensemble des travailleurs actifs, au Québec, ont un TMS de longue durée. Toutefois, l’ajout d’un robot possède ses défis : une mauvaise Interaction physique Humain-Robot (IpHR), via un contact direct entre le robot et l’humain à travers un système de captation (par exemple une poignée instrumentée d’un capteur d’efforts à six degrés de liberté), peut générer des vibrations qui demeurent une source d’inconfort pour les opérateurs. En effet, une augmentation de la rigidité structurelle du bras humain peut occasionner un mouvement vibratoire du robot expliqué par le déplacement des pôles (c.-àd. de la dynamique dominante) près de l’axe imaginaire. Ce projet de recherche comporte deux parties. La première traite de deux approches visant à satisfaire une interaction humain-robot plus intuitive et plus sécuritaire tout en détectant et en minimisant les vibrations mécaniques qui pourraient être générées lors d’une telle interaction. La première approche consiste à détecter et à minimiser les vibrations par un observateur de vibrations de type analyse statistique. Cette dernière a été réalisée avec un signal électrique prélevé par le biais de deux capteurs de force et de vitesse qui sont localisés sur un mécanisme robotique à un degré de liberté lors d’une IpHR dans un contexte réel. La deuxième approche, quant à elle, consiste à concevoir et à développer un second observateur de vibrations actif de type réseau de neurones artificiels dans le but de détecter et de minimiser, en temps réel, les vibrations lors d’une IpHR. Ces algorithmes seront optimisés et comparés pour des fins de mise en oeuvre pratique. La deuxième partie de ce projet de recherche traite d’une mise en oeuvre d’une commande d’un mécanisme robotique à quatre degrés de liberté avec un système haptique virtuel, composé de deux objets virtuels interfacés par la réalité augmentée (RA) grâce aux lunettes Epson Moverio BT-200. Ce système vise à assister et à faciliter les tâches d’assemblages en industrie, surtout dans le cas de la présence d’un obstacle situé dans le champ visuel entre l’opérateur et les pièces à assembler. L’interaction avec ce système virtuel a été introduite, dans un premier temps, par le biais d’un dispositif haptique (le PHANToM Omni) dans le but de tester la plateforme d’assemblage en réalité augmentée. Dans les travaux futurs, le PHANToM Omni sera remplacé par un mécanisme parallèle entraîné par des câbles afin de simuler différents types de robot industriel. Dans cette recherche, le PHANToM permettra de télé-opérer l’effecteur d’un robot industriel simulé dans Robotic Operating System (ROS)

Stability results for constrained dynamical systems

Differential-Algebraic Equations (DAE) provide an appropriate framework to model and analyse dynamic systems with constraints. This framework facilitates modelling of the system behaviour through natural physical variables of the system, while preserving the topological constraints of the system. The main purpose of this dissertation is to investigate stability properties of two important classes of DAEs. We consider some special cases of Linear Time Invariant (LTI) DAEs with control inputs and outputs, and also a special class of Linear switched DAEs. In the first part of the thesis, we consider LTI systems, where we focus on two properties: passivity and a generalization of passivity and small gain theorems called mixed property. These properties play an important role in the control design of large-scale interconnected systems. An important bottleneck for a design based on the aforementioned properties is their verification. Hence we intend to develop easily verifiable conditions to check passivity and mixedness of Single Input Single Output (SISO) and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) DAEs. For linear switched DAEs, we focus on the Lyapunov stability and this problem forms the basis for the second part of the thesis. In this part, we try to find conditions under which there exists a common Lyapunov function for all modes of the switched system, thus guaranteeing exponential stability of the switched system. These results are primarily developed for continuous-time systems. However, simulation and control design of a dynamic system requires a discrete-time representation of the system that we are interested in. Thus, it is critical to establish whether discrete-time systems, inherit fundamental properties of the continuous-time systems from which they are derived. Hence, the third part of our thesis is dedicated to the problems of preserving passivity, mixedness and Lyapunov stability under discretization. In this part, we examine several existing discretization methods and find conditions under which they preserve the stability properties discussed in the thesis

Stability results for constrained dynamical systems

Differential-Algebraic Equations (DAE) provide an appropriate framework to model and analyse dynamic systems with constraints. This framework facilitates modelling of the system behaviour through natural physical variables of the system, while preserving the topological constraints of the system. The main purpose of this dissertation is to investigate stability properties of two important classes of DAEs. We consider some special cases of Linear Time Invariant (LTI) DAEs with control inputs and outputs, and also a special class of Linear switched DAEs. In the first part of the thesis, we consider LTI systems, where we focus on two properties: passivity and a generalization of passivity and small gain theorems called mixed property. These properties play an important role in the control design of large-scale interconnected systems. An important bottleneck for a design based on the aforementioned properties is their verification. Hence we intend to develop easily verifiable conditions to check passivity and mixedness of Single Input Single Output (SISO) and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) DAEs. For linear switched DAEs, we focus on the Lyapunov stability and this problem forms the basis for the second part of the thesis. In this part, we try to find conditions under which there exists a common Lyapunov function for all modes of the switched system, thus guaranteeing exponential stability of the switched system. These results are primarily developed for continuous-time systems. However, simulation and control design of a dynamic system requires a discrete-time representation of the system that we are interested in. Thus, it is critical to establish whether discrete-time systems, inherit fundamental properties of the continuous-time systems from which they are derived. Hence, the third part of our thesis is dedicated to the problems of preserving passivity, mixedness and Lyapunov stability under discretization. In this part, we examine several existing discretization methods and find conditions under which they preserve the stability properties discussed in the thesis

Sampled- and continuous-time passivity and stability of virtual environments

Abstract—We propose a new time-domain passivity observer (PO) and passivity controller (PC) which removes the constant-velocity assumption duringone sample time, which was used in our previous PO/PC approach. A new sampled-time definition of passivity is introduced, and this new definition is compared with the previous sampled-time definition of passivity. Through this comparison, we propose the more accurate PO/PC approach. The proposed new PO/PC approach is applied to the “Excalibur ” haptic interface system with very high stiffness ( aIPHkN m) virtual environment, and stable contact is demonstrated. Index Terms—Haptic interface, passivity controller (PC), passivity observer (PO), time-domain passivity. I