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

Climbing and Walking Robots

With the advancement of technology, new exciting approaches enable us to render mobile robotic systems more versatile, robust and cost-efficient. Some researchers combine climbing and walking techniques with a modular approach, a reconfigurable approach, or a swarm approach to realize novel prototypes as flexible mobile robotic platforms featuring all necessary locomotion capabilities. The purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the latest wide-range achievements in climbing and walking robotic technology to researchers, scientists, and engineers throughout the world. Different aspects including control simulation, locomotion realization, methodology, and system integration are presented from the scientific and from the technical point of view. This book consists of two main parts, one dealing with walking robots, the second with climbing robots. The content is also grouped by theoretical research and applicative realization. Every chapter offers a considerable amount of interesting and useful information

屋外調査用自律移動型ロボットの不整地移動性能

早大学位記番号:新7829早稲田大

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

An overview of waste materials for sustainable road construction

Untreated soil typically has low shear strength, swelling behavior, high compressibility and its characteristics were highly dependent on the environment. In general, such problematic soil will lead to severe damages in road construction industry such as bearing capacity failure, slope instability, and excessive settlement. Agricultural waste, construction waste, and municipal waste have recently gained considerable attention as a sustainable material in road construction application due to its availability, environmental friendly and low-cost materials. Therefore in this review, randomly distributed fiber reinforced soil and oriented distributed fiber reinforced soil will be extensively discussed based on the emerging trend. It further reviewed the feasibility of using waste materials as a reinforcement material for the road construction industry. The review also attempts to evaluate and compare the engineering properties of soil and sustainable materials in order to enhance soil performance as well as help to improve the environment affected by growing waste materials

From bipedal locomotion to prosthetic walking: A hybrid system and nonlinear control approach

When modeled after the human form, humanoid robots more easily garner societal acceptance and gain increased dexterity in human environments. During this process of humanoid robot design, research on simulated bodies also yields a better understanding of the original biological system. Such advantages make humanoid robots ideal for use in areas such as elderly assistance, physical rehabilitation, assistive exoskeletons, and prosthetic devices. In these applications specifically, an understanding of human-like bipedal robotic locomotion is requisite for practical purposes. However, compared to mobile robots with wheels, humanoid walking robots are complex to design, difficult to balance, and hard to control, resulting in humanoid robots which walk slowly and unnaturally. Despite emerging research and technologies on humanoid robotic locomotion in recent decades, there still lacks a systematic method for obtaining truly kinematic and fluid walking. In this dissertation, we propose a formal optimization framework for achieving stable, human-like robotic walking with natural heel and toe behavior. Importantly, the mathematical construction allows us to directly realize natural walking on the custom-designed physical robot, AMBER2, resulting in a sustainable and robust multi-contact walking gait. As one of the ultimate goals of studying human-like robotic locomotion, the proposed systematic methodology is then translated to achieve prosthetic walking that is both human-like and energy-efficient, with reduced need for parameter tuning. We evaluate this method on two custom, powered transfemoral prostheses in both 2D (AMPRO1) and 3D (AMPRO3) cases. Finally, this dissertation concludes with future research opportunities.Ph.D

Bipedal humanoid robot control by fuzzy adjustment of the reference walking plane

The two-legged humanoid structure has advantages for an assistive robot in the human living and working environment. A bipedal humanoid robot can avoid typical obstacles at homes and offices, reach consoles and appliances designed for human use and can be carried in human transport vehicles. Also, it is speculated that the absorption of robots in the human shape into the human society can be easier than that of other artificial forms. However, the control of bipedal walk is a challenge. Walking performance on solely even floor is not satisfactory. The complications of obtaining a balanced walk are dramatically more pronounced on uneven surfaces like inclined planes, which are quite commonly encountered in human surroundings. The difficulties lie in a variety of tasks ranging from sensor and data fusion to the design of adaptation systems which respond to changing surface conditions. This thesis presents a study on bipedal walk on inclined planes with changing slopes. A Zero Moment Point (ZMP) based gait synthesis technique is employed. The pitch angle reference for the foot sole plane −as expressed in a coordinate frame attached at the robot body − is adjusted online by a fuzzy logic system to adapt to different walking surface slopes. Average ankle pitch torques and the average value of the body pitch angle, computed over a history of a predetermined number of sampling instants, are used as the inputs to this system. The proposed control method is tested via walking experiments with the 29 degreesof- freedom (DOF) human-sized full-body humanoid robot SURALP (Sabanci University Robotics Research Laboratory Platform). Experiments are performed on even floor and inclined planes with different slopes. The results indicate that the approach presented is successful in enabling the robot to stably enter, ascend and leave inclined planes with 15 percent (8.5 degrees) grade. The thesis starts with a terminology section on bipedal walking and introduces a number of successful humanoid robot projects. A survey of control techniques for the walk on uneven surfaces is presented. The design and construction of the experimental robotic platform SURALP is discussed with the mechanical, electronic, walking reference generation and control aspects. The fuzzy reference adjustment system proposed for the walk on inclined planes is detailed and experimental results are presented

Stable locomotion of humanoid robots based on mass concentrated model

El estudio de la locomoción de robots humanoides es actualmente un área muy activa, en el campo de la robótica. Partiendo del principio que el hombre esta construyendo robots para trabajar juntos cooperando en ambientes humanos. La estabilidad durante la caminata es un factor crítico que prevee la caída 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 locomoción bípeda, esto es los métodos empleados para “La generación 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 método para generar el paso propuesto esta compuesto de varias capas como son Movimiento global, movimiento local, generación de patrones de movimiento, cinemática inversa y dinámica inversa y finalmente una corrección off-line. Donde la entrada en este método es la meta global (es decir la configuración final del robot, en el entorno de marcha) y las salidas son los patrones de movimiento de las articulaciones junto con el patrón de referencia del ZMP. Por otro lado, se ha propuesto el método para generar el “Paso acíclico”. Este método abarca el movimiento del paso dinámico incluyendo todo el cuerpo del robot humanoide, desde desde cuaquier postura genérica 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 articulación 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 acíclico” 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