Functional mimicry of Ruffini receptors with fibre Bragg gratings and deep neural networks enables a bio-inspired large-area tactile-sensitive skin

Collaborative robots are expected to physically interact with humans in daily living and the workplace, including industrial and healthcare settings. A key related enabling technology is tactile sensing, which currently requires addressing the outstanding scientific challenge to simultaneously detect contact location and intensity by means of soft conformable artificial skins adapting over large areas to the complex curved geometries of robot embodiments. In this work, the development of a large-area sensitive soft skin with a curved geometry is presented, allowing for robot total-body coverage through modular patches. The biomimetic skin consists of a soft polymeric matrix, resembling a human forearm, embedded with photonic fibre Bragg grating transducers, which partially mimics Ruffini mechanoreceptor functionality with diffuse, overlapping receptive fields. A convolutional neural network deep learning algorithm and a multigrid neuron integration process were implemented to decode the fibre Bragg grating sensor outputs for inference of contact force magnitude and localization through the skin surface. Results of 35 mN (interquartile range 56 mN) and 3.2 mm (interquartile range 2.3 mm) median errors were achieved for force and localization predictions, respectively. Demonstrations with an anthropomorphic arm pave the way towards artificial intelligence based integrated skins enabling safe human–robot cooperation via machine intelligence

Emerging Trends in Mechatronics

Mechatronics is a multidisciplinary branch of engineering combining mechanical, electrical and electronics, control and automation, and computer engineering fields. The main research task of mechatronics is design, control, and optimization of advanced devices, products, and hybrid systems utilizing the concepts found in all these fields. The purpose of this special issue is to help better understand how mechatronics will impact on the practice and research of developing advanced techniques to model, control, and optimize complex systems. The special issue presents recent advances in mechatronics and related technologies. The selected topics give an overview of the state of the art and present new research results and prospects for the future development of the interdisciplinary field of mechatronic systems

Data analytics enhanced component volatility model

Volatility modelling and forecasting have attracted many attentions in both finance and computation areas. Recent advances in machine learning allow us to construct complex models on volatility forecasting. However, the machine learning algorithms have been used merely as additional tools to the existing econometrics models. The hybrid models that specifically capture the characteristics of the volatility data have not been developed yet. We propose a new hybrid model, which is constructed by a low-pass filter, the autoregressive neural network and an autoregressive model. The volatility data is decomposed by the low-pass filter into long and short term components, which are then modelled by the autoregressive neural network and an autoregressive model respectively. The total forecasting result is aggregated by the outputs of two models. The experimental evaluations using one-hour and one-day realized volatility across four major foreign exchanges showed that the proposed model significantly outperforms the component GARCH, EGARCH and neural network only models in all forecasting horizons

Hybrid functional networks for oil reservoir PVT characterisation

Predicting pressure-volume-temperature (PVT) properties of black oil is one of the key processes required in a successful oil exploration. As crude oils from different regions have different properties, some researchers have used API gravity, which is used to classify crude oils, to develop different empirical correlations for different classes of black oils. However, this manual grouping may not necessarily result in correlations that appropriately capture the uncertainties in the black oils. This paper proposes intelligent clustering to group black oils before passing the clusters as inputs to the functional networks for prediction. This hybrid process gives better performance than the empirical correlations, standalone functional networks and neural network predictions

A brief review of neural networks based learning and control and their applications for robots

As an imitation of the biological nervous systems, neural networks (NN), which are characterized with powerful learning ability, have been employed in a wide range of applications, such as control of complex nonlinear systems, optimization, system identification and patterns recognition etc. This article aims to bring a brief review of the state-of-art NN for the complex nonlinear systems. Recent progresses of NNs in both theoretical developments and practical applications are investigated and surveyed. Specifically, NN based robot learning and control applications were further reviewed, including NN based robot manipulator control, NN based human robot interaction and NN based behavior recognition and generation

E2GKpro: An evidential evolving multi-modeling approach for system behavior prediction with applications.

International audienceNonlinear dynamical systems identification and behavior prediction are di cult problems encountered in many areas of industrial applications such as fault diagnosis and prognosis. In practice, the analytical description of a nonlinear system directly from observed data is a very challenging task because of the the too large number of the related parameters to be estimated. As a solution, multi-modeling approaches have lately been applied and consist in dividing the operating range of the system under study into di erent operating regions easier to describe by simpler functions to be combined. In order to take into consideration the uncertainty related to the available data as well as the uncertainty resulting from the nonlinearity of the system, evidence theory is of particular interest, because it permits the explicit modeling of doubt and ignorance. In the context of multi-modeling, information of doubt may be exploited to properly segment the data and take into account the uncertainty in the transitions between the operating regions. Recently, the Evidential Evolving Gustafson-Kessel algorithm (E2GK) has been proposed to ensure an online partitioning of the data into clusters that correspond to operating regions. Based on E2GK, a multi-modeling approach called E2GKpro is introduced in this paper, which dynamically performs the estimation of the local models by upgrading and modifying their parameters while data arrive. The proposed algorithm is tested on several datasets and compared to existing approaches. The results show that the use of virtual centroids in E2GKpro account for its robustness to noise and generating less operating regions while ensuring precise predictions

Modelling and real-time control of a high performance rotary wood planing machine

Rotary planing is one of the most valuable machining operations in the timber processing industry. It has been established that cutting tool inaccuracy and forced vibration during the machining process are the primary causes of surface quality degradation. The main aim of this thesis is to design a control architecture that is suitable for adaptive operation of a wood planing machining in order to improve the quality of its surface finish. In order to achieve the stated goal, thorough understanding of the effects of machine deficiencies on surface finish quality is required. Therefore, a generic simulation model for synthesising the surface profiles produced by wood planing process is first developed. The model is used to simulate the combined effects of machining parameters, vibration and cutting tool inaccuracy on the resultant surface profiles. It has been postulated that online monitoring of surface finish quality can be used to provide feedback information for a secondary control loop for the machining process, which will lead to the production of consistently high quality surface finishes. There is an existing vision-based wood surface profile measurement technique, but the application of the technique has been limited to static wood samples. This thesis extends the application of the technique to moving wood samples. It is shown experimentally that the method is suitable for in-process surface profile measurements. The current industrial wood planing machines do not have the capability of measuring and adjusting process parameters in real-time. Therefore, knowledge of the causes of surface finish degradation would enable the operators to optimise the mechanical structure of the machines offline. For this reason, two novel approaches for characterising defects on planed timber surfaces have been created in this thesis using synthetic data. The output of this work is a software tool that can assist machine operators in inferring the causes of defects based on the waviness components of the workpiece surface finish. The main achievement in this research is the design of a new active wood planing technique that combines real-time cutter path optimisation (cutting tool inaccuracy compensation) with vibration disturbance rejection. The technique is based on real-time vertical displacements of the machine spindle. Simulation and experimental results obtained from a smart wood planing machine show significant improvements in the dynamic performance of the machine and the produced surface finish quality. Potential areas for future research include application of the defects characterisation techniques to real data and full integration of the dynamic surface profile measurements with the smart wood planing machine

Clarification of Water Stress in Apple Seedlings Using HSI Texture with Machine Learning Technique

Apples are known for their nutrition and economic value. Accurate and rapid diagnosis of water status in apple seedlings on an individual rootstock basis is a prerequisite for precision water management. This study presents a rapid and non-destructive approach for estimating water content in apple seedlings at leaf levels. A PIKA L system collects hyperspectral images(400-1000nm) of apple leaves. To the author's knowledge, no prior work was conducted using the spectral-texture approach in plant water stress. Our research extracts spatial information, gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM), from feature wavelength images of hypercubes. Machine learning methods are applied to these spatial feature matrixs to identify apple leaves under different water stresses. In addition, differences in spectral responses were analysed using machine learning techniques for sorting apple seedlings with varying water treatments (dry, normal, and overwatering). Also, we measure chlorophyll to determine the relationship between hyperspectral characteristics and physiological changes. The achievements of the research indicate that the fusion of texture and hyperspectral imaging coupled with machine learning techniques is promising and presents a powerful potential to determine the water stress in the leaves of apple seedlings