We present a novel motorized semi-autonomous mobile hospital bed guided by a human operator and a reactive navigation algorithm. The proposed reactive navigation algorithm is launched when the sensory device detects that the hospital bed is in the potential danger of collision. The semi-autonomous hospital bed is able to safely and quickly deliver critical neurosurgery (head trauma) patients to target locations in dynamic uncertain hospital environments such as crowded hospital corridors while avoiding en-route steady and moving obstacles. We do not restrict the nature or the motion of the obstacles, meaning that the shapes of the obstacles may be time-varying or deforming and they may undergo arbitrary motions. The only information available to the navigation system is the current distance to the nearest obstacle. Performance of the proposed navigation algorithm is verified via theoretical studies. Simulation and experimental results also confirm the performance of the reactive navigation algorithm in real world scenarios.

In order to provide a novel approach for the operational problems of walking robots, this paper presents a method by which a hexapod robot uses its legs to manipulate an object, and this involves the following two steps. First, two adjacent legs are used to manipulate the object. Next, the supporting legs are required to assist the arms to obtain high manipulability. The manipulation constraints, workplaces, and kinematic models are analyzed using screw theories. Moreover, an optimization algorithm is proposed to reduce energy consumption under stability constraints. We also introduce a manipulation control model that simultaneously considers the supporting and operating legs. Finally, the validity of these methods is proved by the results of experiments and simulations.

To fully utilize the dynamic performance of robotic manipulators and enforce minimum motion time in path tracking, the problem of minimum time path tracking for robotic manipulators under confined torque, change rate of the torque, and voltage of the DC motor is considered. The main contribution is the introduction of the concepts of virtual change rate of the torque and the virtual voltage, which are linear functions in the state and control variables and are shown to be very tight approximation to the real ones. As a result, the computationally challenging non-convex minimum time path tracking problem is reduced to a convex optimization problem which can be solved efficiently. It is also shown that introducing dynamics constraints can significantly improve the motion precision without costing much in motion time, especially in the case of high speed motion. Extensive simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Motivated by the trade-off between speed and stability for off-road navigation, a novel active anti-roll system has been developed in the context of a multidisciplinary project which aims at developing a high-speed and agile autonomous off-road rover. This paper presents the design, simulation and experimental validation of an active anti-roll system and its associated control. The proposed system possess the advantage of having a modular design that can be installed on any off-road chassis with independent suspensions. The proposed system controls directly the roll angle of the rover which is usually uncontrollable in conventional vehicles, hence improving off-road stability while maneuverings at high speed over uneven terrain. Furthermore, the control of the proposed active anti-roll system is based on a model predictive control (MPC) for the roll dynamics, which minimizes the load transfer during cornering and the energy consumed by the actuators. The control model is based on a dynamic model of the rover and on a stability criteria defined by the lateral load transfer (LLT). Moreover, this paper presents, simulation results from the high fidelity virtual platform modeled in MSC.Adams ®, as well as, results from recent field tests demonstrating the effectiveness of a hydraulic active anti-roll system mounted on, an especially developed experimental platform, SPIDO ROBOT while cornering at a high speed reaching 8 m/s.

In this study, a model for wheeled mobile robots that includes a static friction model in the force balance at the robot's center of mass is presented. Additionally, a least-squares method to linearly combine functions is proposed to estimate the friction coefficients. The experimental and simulation results are discussed to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach in indoor environments for two floor types.

The manipulation in singular regions promotes an instantaneous reduction in mechanism mobility, which can result in some disturbances in the trajectory tracking. The application of the quaternionic elements for motion representation not only guarantees an orthonormal transformation but also results in the smallest variance and minimizes the acceleration peaks. The use of a unit quaternion avoids these phenomena, but there are dimensional limitations that make it impossible to translate the representation. This work presents a methodology for using dual quaternions in the analysis of robot kinematics using the Davies method, which avoids kinematic singularities and ensures the optimal torque profiles.

Recently, small-sized compact electric vehicles have been in demand for short-distance travel in urban areas, although battery charging in electric vehicles present in the market is still problematic. Borrowing from the concept of a mobile inverted pendulum system, in this paper, a two-wheel robotic vehicle system is implemented and controlled as the future personal transportation device called the TransBOT. The TransBOT has two driving modes: a regular vehicle mode, where stable contact on the ground is maintained by two wheels and two casters, and the balancing mode, which maintains the stable posture with two wheels on the ground. The two-wheel balancing mechanism can be used as a transportation vehicle in narrow and busy urban areas. Gain scheduling control methods based on linear controllers are used for different drivers. In addition, desired balancing angles are specified for the different sizes of drivers in order to have a stable balancing control performance. These desired balancing angle values have been found by empirical studies. Experimental studies with drivers of different weights, as well as indoor and outdoor driving tasks, were conducted to ensure the feasibility of TransBOT.

A novel n(2-UPS/PS+RPS) spatial hyper-redundant manipulator (SHRM) formed by an optional number of 2-UPS/PS+RPS(2-universal joint-prismatic joint-spherical joint/prismatic joint-spherical joint+revolute joint-prismatic joint-spherical joint) parallel manipulators(PMs) connected in series is proposed and analyzed in this paper. First, the forward kinematics of the 2-UPS/PS+RPS PM is derived in close form. By extending this result to the whole SHRM, the forward kinematics model of the n(2-UPS/PS+RPS) SHRM is established. Second, the compact and elegant expressions for solving the forward velocity of the n(2-UPS/PS+RPS) SHRM are derived. Third, the statics and stiffness of the n(2-UPS/PS+RPS) SHRM are analyzed systematically by considering both active forces and constrained forces existed in each 2-UPS/PS+RPS PM. Finally, an analytically solved example is given for a 4(2-UPS/PS+RPS) SHRM formed by four 2-UPS/PS+RPS PMs. The analytical results are verified by CAD software.

The paper deals with the development and application of a new adaptive calibration method that extends the geometrical calibration of mechanisms from calibration of only dimensions and kinematical joint positions into the calibration of kinematic joint shape imperfections. Originally unknown nonlinear properties of the kinematical pairs are adaptively included into the kinematical models that are used during the calibration calculation. The method uses description by local linear models and validity functions in order to identify and describe nonlinear properties of the kinematical pairs. During each calibration step, various models with growing complexity are considered before the best model variant is selected to improve calibration results. The method is mainly devoted to the structures with many loops like parallel and fiber-driven parallel mechanisms. The method is applied to parallel mechanism Sliding Star and parallel fiber-driven mechanism Quadrosphere.

The inverse dynamics model of a novel (3-UPU)+(3-UPS+S) serial–parallel manipulator (S-PM) formed by a 3-UPU PM and a 3-UPS+S PM connected in serial is studied in this paper. First, the inverse position, velocity, and acceleration of this S-PM are studied systematically. Second, the velocity mapping relations between each component and the terminal platform of (3-UPU)+(3-UPS+S) S-PM are derived. Third, the dynamics model of the whole (3-UPU)+(3-UPS+S) S-PM is established by means of the principle of virtual work. The process for establishing the dynamics model of this S-PM is fit for other S-PMs.

This paper deals with the analytical modeling and the analysis of the orientation error of the RAF translator due to the clearances in the joints. This model presents the orientation error as a function of the nominal pose, the external load applied to the platform, the manipulator structural parameters, and the joints clearances. Based on this model, an algorithm is developed in order to map the pose error within a desired workspace of the manipulator. It is shown that the orientation error variation depends essentially on the parallelogram configuration of the passive legs out of its plane. The orientation error magnitude is mainly caused by the parallelogram revolute joints radial clearances. Moreover, the orientation error around the z-axis presents some discontinuities due to the contact mode change of the parallelogram revolute joints.

We designed a quadruped robot with a one-degree-of-freedom (1-DOF)-pitch head, a 1-DOF-roll tail, and 14 active DOFs in total, which are controlled via a central pattern generator (CPG) based on a Hopf oscillator. Head and tail movements are coupled to the leg movements with fixed phase differences. Experiments show that tail swinging in roll can equilibrate feet–ground reaction forces (GRF), reducing yaw errors and enabling the robot to maintain its direction when trotting. Head swing in pitch has the potential to increase flight time and stride length of the swinging legs and increase the robot's forward velocity when running in bounds.

In the context of topological mapping, the automatic segmentation of an environment into meaningful and distinct locations is still regarded as an open problem. This paper presents an algorithm to extract places online from image sequences based on the algebraic connectivity of graphs or Fiedler value, which provides an insight into how well connected several consecutive observations are. The main contribution of the proposed method is that it is a theoretically supported alternative to tuning thresholds on similarities, which is a difficult task and environment dependent. It can accommodate any type of feature detector and matching procedure, as it only requires non-negative similarities as input, and is therefore able to deal with descriptors of variable length, to which statistical techniques are difficult to apply. The method has been validated in an office environment using exclusively visual information. Two different types of features, a bag-of-words model built from scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) keypoints, and a more complex fingerprint based on vertical lines, color histograms, and a few Star keypoints, are employed to demonstrate that the method can be applied to both fixed and variable length descriptors with similar results.

This paper proposes a control scheme applied to the delayed bilateral teleoperation of mobile robots with force feedback in face of asymmetric and time-varying delays. The scheme is managed by a velocity PD-like control plus impedance and a force feedback based on damping and synchronization error. A fictitious force, depending on the robot motion and its environment, is used to avoid possible collisions. In addition, the stability of the system is analyzed from which simple conditions for the control parameters are established in order to assure stability. Finally, the performance of the delayed teleoperation system is shown through experiments where a human operator drives a mobile robot.