31 research outputs found
Mechatronic Systems
Mechatronics, the synergistic blend of mechanics, electronics, and computer science, has evolved over the past twenty five years, leading to a novel stage of engineering design. By integrating the best design practices with the most advanced technologies, mechatronics aims at realizing high-quality products, guaranteeing at the same time a substantial reduction of time and costs of manufacturing. Mechatronic systems are manifold and range from machine components, motion generators, and power producing machines to more complex devices, such as robotic systems and transportation vehicles. With its twenty chapters, which collect contributions from many researchers worldwide, this book provides an excellent survey of recent work in the field of mechatronics with applications in various fields, like robotics, medical and assistive technology, human-machine interaction, unmanned vehicles, manufacturing, and education. We would like to thank all the authors who have invested a great deal of time to write such interesting chapters, which we are sure will be valuable to the readers. Chapters 1 to 6 deal with applications of mechatronics for the development of robotic systems. Medical and assistive technologies and human-machine interaction systems are the topic of chapters 7 to 13.Chapters 14 and 15 concern mechatronic systems for autonomous vehicles. Chapters 16-19 deal with mechatronics in manufacturing contexts. Chapter 20 concludes the book, describing a method for the installation of mechatronics education in schools
Stable locomotion of humanoid robots based on mass concentrated model
El estudio de la locomociĂłn de robots humanoides es actualmente un área muy activa, en el campo de la robĂłtica. Partiendo del principio que el hombre esta construyendo robots para trabajar juntos cooperando en ambientes humanos. La estabilidad durante la caminata es un factor crĂtico que prevee la caĂda del robot, la cual puede causar deterioros al mismo y a las personas en su entorno. De esta manera, el presente trabajo pretende resolver una parte del problema de la locomociĂłn bĂpeda, esto es los mĂ©todos empleados para “La generaciĂłn del paso” (“Gait generation”) y asi obtener la caminata estable. Para obtener una marcha estable se utilizan modelos de masa concentrada. De esta manera el modelo del “pendulo invertido simple” y el modelo del “carro sobre la mesa” se han utilizado para conseguir la marcha estable de robots humanoides. En el modelo del pendulo invertido, la masa el pendulo conduce el movimiento del centro de gravedad (CDG) del robot humanoide durante la marcha. Se detallara que el CDG se mueve como una bola libre sobre un plano bajo las leyes del pendulo en el campo de gravedad. Mientras que en el modelo del “carro sobre la mesa”, el carro conduce el movimiento del CDG durante la marcha. En este caso, el movimiento del carro es tratado como un sistema servocontrolado, y el movimiento del CDG es obtenido con los actuales y futuros estados de referencia del Zero Moment Point (ZMP). El mĂ©todo para generar el paso propuesto esta compuesto de varias capas como son Movimiento global, movimiento local, generaciĂłn de patrones de movimiento, cinemática inversa y dinámica inversa y finalmente una correcciĂłn off-line. Donde la entrada en este mĂ©todo es la meta global (es decir la configuraciĂłn final del robot, en el entorno de marcha) y las salidas son los patrones de movimiento de las articulaciones junto con el patrĂłn de referencia del ZMP. Por otro lado, se ha propuesto el mĂ©todo para generar el “Paso acĂclico”. Este mĂ©todo abarca el movimiento del paso dinámico incluyendo todo el cuerpo del robot humanoide, desde desde cuaquier postura genĂ©rica estáticamente estable hasta otra; donde las entradas son los estados inicial y final del robot (esto es los ángulos iniciales y finales de las articulaciones) y las salidas son las trayectorias de referencia de cada articulaciĂłn y del ZMP. Se han obtenido resultados satisfactorios en las simulaciones y en el robot humanoide real Rh-1 desarrollado en el Robotics lab de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. De igual manera el movimiento innovador llamado “Paso acĂclico” se ha implemenado exitosamente en el robot humanoide HRP-2 (desarrollado por el AIST e Industrias Kawada Inc., Japon). Finalmente los resultados, contribuciones y trabajos futuros se expondran y discutirán. _______________________________________________The study of humanoid robot locomotion is currently a very active area
in robotics, since humans build robots to work their environments in common
cooperation and in harmony. Stability during walking motion is a critical fact in
preventing the robot from falling down and causing the human or itself damages.
This work tries to solve a part of the locomotion problem, which is, the “Gait
Generation” methods used to obtain stable walking.
Mass concentrated models are used to obtain stable walking motion. Thus
the inverted pendulum model and the cart-table model are used to obtain stable
walking motion in humanoid robots.
In the inverted pendulum model, the mass of the pendulum drives the center
of gravity (COG) motion of the humanoid robot while it is walking. It will be
detailed that the COG moves like a free ball on a plane under the laws of the
pendulum in the field of gravity.
While in the cart-table model, the cart drives the COG motion during walking
motion. In this case, the cart motion is treated as a servo control system,
obtaining its motion from future reference states of the ZMP.
The gait generation method proposed has many layers like Global motion,
local motion, motion patterns generation, inverse kinematics and inverse dynamics
and finally off-line correction. When the input in the gait generation
method is the global goal (that is the final configuration of the robot in walking
environment), and the output is the joint patterns and ZMP reference patterns.
Otherwise, the “Acyclic gait” method is proposed. This method deals with
the whole body humanoid robot dynamic step motion from any generic posture
to another one when the input is the initial and goal robot states (that is the
initial and goal joint angles) and the output is the joint and ZMP reference
patterns.
Successful simulation and actual results have been obtained with the Rh-
1 humanoid robot developed in the Robotics lab (Universidad Carlos III de
Madrid, Spain) and the innovative motion called “Acyclic gait” implemented in
the HRP-2 humanoid robot platform (developed by the AIST and Kawada Industries
Inc., Japan). Furthermore, the results, contributions and future works
will be discussed
Dancing Media: The Contagious Movement of Posthuman Bodies (or Towards A Posthuman Theory of Dance)
My dissertation seeks to define a posthuman theory of dance through a historical study of the dancer as an instrument or technology for exploring emergent visual media, and by positioning screendance as an experimental technique for animating posthuman relation and thought. Commonly understood as ephemeral, dance is produced by assemblages that include bodies but are not limited to them. In this way, dance exceeds the human body. There is a central tension in the practice of dance, between the persistent presumption of the dancing body as a channel for human expression, and dance as a technicity of the body—a discipline and a practice of repeated gesture—that calls into question categories of the human. A posthuman theory of dance invites examination of such tensions and interrogates traditional notions of authenticity, ownership and commodification, as well as the bounded, individual subject who can assess the surrounding world with precise clarity, certain of where the human begins and ends.
The guiding historical question for my dissertation is: if it is possible to describe both a modern form of posthuman dance (turn of the 19th-20th century), and a more recent form of posthuman dance (turn of the 20th-21st century), are they part of the same assemblage or are they constituted differently, and if so, how? Throughout my four chapters, I explore an array of case studies from early modernism to advanced capitalism, including Loie Fuller’s otherworldly stage dances; the scientific motion studies of Muybridge and Marey; Fritz Lang’s dancing maschinenmensch (or the first on-screen dancing machine) in the 1927 film Metropolis; the performances of singer-dancer hologram pop star, Hatsune Miku; and American engineering firm Boston Dynamics’ dancing military robots. The figure of the “dancing machine” (McCarren) is central to my project, especially given that dance has historically been used as a means of testing machines—from automata to robots to CGI images animated with MoCap—in their capacity to be lively or human-like. In each case, I am interested in how dance continues to be productive of some kind of subjectivity (or interiority, or “soul”), even in the absence of the human body, and how technique and gesture passes between bodies, both virtual and organic, dispersing agency often attributed to the human alone.
I propose that a posthuman theory of dance is a necessary intervention to the broad and contradictory field of posthumanism because dance returns us to questions about bodies that are often suspiciously ignored in theories of posthumanism, especially regarding race (and historically racist categories of non/inhumanity), thereby exposing many of posthumanism’s biases, appropriations, dispossessions and erasures. Throughout my dissertation, I look to dance as both a concrete example and as a method of thinking through the potentials and limitations of posthumanism
Locomoção bĂpede adaptativa a partir de uma Ăşnica demonstração usando primitivas de movimento
Doutoramento em Engenharia EletrotécnicaEste trabalho aborda o problema de capacidade de imitação da locomoção
humana atravĂ©s da utilização de trajetĂłrias de baixo nĂvel codificadas com
primitivas de movimento e utilizá-las para depois generalizar para novas
situações, partindo apenas de uma demonstração única. Assim, nesta linha de
pensamento, os principais objetivos deste trabalho sĂŁo dois: o primeiro Ă©
analisar, extrair e codificar demonstrações efetuadas por um humano, obtidas
por um sistema de captura de movimento de forma a modelar tarefas de
locomoção bĂpede. Contudo, esta transferĂŞncia nĂŁo está limitada Ă simples
reprodução desses movimentos, requerendo uma evolução das capacidades
para adaptação a novas situações, assim como lidar com perturbações
inesperadas. Assim, o segundo objetivo é o desenvolvimento e avaliação de
uma estrutura de controlo com capacidade de modelação das ações, de tal
forma que a demonstração única apreendida possa ser modificada para o robô
se adaptar a diversas situações, tendo em conta a sua dinâmica e o ambiente
onde está inserido.
A ideia por detrás desta abordagem é resolver o problema da generalização a
partir de uma demonstração única, combinando para isso duas estruturas
básicas. A primeira consiste num sistema gerador de padrões baseado em
primitivas de movimento utilizando sistemas dinâmicos (DS). Esta abordagem
de codificação de movimentos possui propriedades desejáveis que a torna ideal
para geração de trajetórias, tais como a possibilidade de modificar determinados
parâmetros em tempo real, tais como a amplitude ou a frequência do ciclo do
movimento e robustez a pequenas perturbações. A segunda estrutura, que está
embebida na anterior, Ă© composta por um conjunto de osciladores acoplados
em fase que organizam as ações de unidades funcionais de forma coordenada.
Mudanças em determinadas condições, como o instante de contacto ou
impactos com o solo, levam a modelos com mĂşltiplas fases. Assim, em vez de
forçar o movimento do robô a situações pré-determinadas de forma temporal, o
gerador de padrões de movimento proposto explora a transição entre diferentes
fases que surgem da interação do robô com o ambiente, despoletadas por
eventos sensoriais. A abordagem proposta Ă© testada numa estrutura de
simulação dinâmica, sendo que várias experiências são efetuadas para avaliar
os métodos e o desempenho dos mesmos.This work addresses the problem of learning to imitate human locomotion actions
through low-level trajectories encoded with motion primitives and generalizing
them to new situations from a single demonstration. In this line of thought, the
main objectives of this work are twofold: The first is to analyze, extract and
encode human demonstrations taken from motion capture data in order to model
biped locomotion tasks. However, transferring motion skills from humans to
robots is not limited to the simple reproduction, but requires the evaluation of
their ability to adapt to new situations, as well as to deal with unexpected
disturbances. Therefore, the second objective is to develop and evaluate a
control framework for action shaping such that the single-demonstration can be
modulated to varying situations, taking into account the dynamics of the robot
and its environment.
The idea behind the approach is to address the problem of generalization from
a single-demonstration by combining two basic structures. The first structure is
a pattern generator system consisting of movement primitives learned and
modelled by dynamical systems (DS). This encoding approach possesses
desirable properties that make them well-suited for trajectory generation, namely
the possibility to change parameters online such as the amplitude and the
frequency of the limit cycle and the intrinsic robustness against small
perturbations. The second structure, which is embedded in the previous one,
consists of coupled phase oscillators that organize actions into functional
coordinated units. The changing contact conditions plus the associated impacts
with the ground lead to models with multiple phases. Instead of forcing the robot’s
motion into a predefined fixed timing, the proposed pattern generator explores
transition between phases that emerge from the interaction of the robot system
with the environment, triggered by sensor-driven events. The proposed approach
is tested in a dynamics simulation framework and several experiments are
conducted to validate the methods and to assess the performance of a humanoid
robot
The Machine as Art/ The Machine as Artist
The articles collected in this volume from the two companion Arts Special Issues, “The Machine as Art (in the 20th Century)” and “The Machine as Artist (in the 21st Century)”, represent a unique scholarly resource: analyses by artists, scientists, and engineers, as well as art historians, covering not only the current (and astounding) rapprochement between art and technology but also the vital post-World War II period that has led up to it; this collection is also distinguished by several of the contributors being prominent individuals within their own fields, or as artists who have actually participated in the still unfolding events with which it is concerne
Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud
Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp
Whoever Said Change Was Good: The Transforming Body of the Disney Villainess
This dissertation examines female figures in Disney animation through the lens of Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), a system for observing and articulating movement qualities. Drawing from six major films released between 1937 and 2010, I focus my inquiry on how the bodies and movement of Disneys villainesses reflect and/or perpetuate cultural imaginaries of women. I identify the influence of several cultural tropes of femininity, including fairy-tale archetypes, ballet conventions, and the Hollywood femme fatale, and explore how they constellate social understandings of age, beauty, and desirability. Coalescing around the theme of physical transformation, the study investigates how consistent movement patterns both support character animation and reflect gender ideologies encoded in the bodies of these wicked women. Through a methodology grounded in LMA and drawing from dance studies, feminist theory, and Disney scholarship, I interrogate popular conceptions of women and evil, articulate how movement contributes to cultural meaning, and demonstrate LMAs value to cultural analysis and animation
Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things 3/E
Among species, human beings seem to be a peculiar lot. Why is it, for example, that certain members of the species routinely put their survival at risk by
puffing on a small stick of nicotine? Why is it that some females of the species
make locomotion difficult for themselves by donning high-heel footwear? Are
there hidden or unconscious reasons behind such strange behaviors that seem
to be so utterly counter-instinctual, so to speak?
For no manifest biological reason, humanity has always searched, and continues to search, for a purpose to its life. Is it this search that has led it to engage in such bizarre behaviors as smoking and wearing high heels? And is it
the reason behind humanity’s invention of myths, art, rituals, languages,
mathematics, science, and all the other truly remarkable things that set it
apart from all other species? Clearly, Homo sapiens appears to be unique in the
fact that many of its behaviors are shaped by forces other than the instincts.
The discipline that endeavors to understand these forces is known as semiotics.
Relatively unknown in comparison to, say, philosophy or psychology, semiotics probes the human condition in its own peculiar way, by unraveling the meanings of the signs that undergird not only the wearing of high-heel shoes,
but also the construction of words, paintings, sculptures, and the like