In this paper, we introduce a lower extremity exoskeleton CUHK-EXO that is developed to help paraplegic patients, who have lost the motor and sensory functions of their lower limbs to perform basic daily life motions. Since the sit-to-stand and stand-to-sit (STS) motion is the first step for paraplegic patients toward walking, analysis of the exoskeleton's applicability to the STS motion assistance is performed. First, the human-exoskeleton system (HES) is modeled as a five-link model during the STS motion, and the center of pressure (COP) on the ground and center of gravity of the whole system are calculated. Then, a description of the CUHK-EXO hardware design is presented, including the mechatronics design and actuator selection. The COP position is an important factor indicating system balance and wearer's comfort. Based on the COP position, a trajectory online modification algorithm (TOMA) is proposed for CUHK-EXO to counteract disturbances, stabilize system balance, and improve the wearer's comfort in the STS motion. The results of STS motion tests conducted with a paraplegic patient demonstrate that CUHK-EXO can provide a normal reference pattern and proper assistive torque to support the patient's STS motion. In addition, a pilot study is conducted with a healthy subject to verify the effectiveness of the proposed TOMA under external disturbances before future clinical trials. The testing results verify that CUHK-EXO can counteract disturbances, and help the wearer perform the STS motion safely and comfortably.

Stability, high response quality and rapidity are required for reactive omnidirectional walking in humanoids. Early schemes focused on generating gaits for predefined footstep locations and suffered from the risk of falling over because they lacked the ability to suitably adapt foot placement. Later methods combining stride adaptation and center of mass (COM) trajectory modification experienced difficulties related to increasing computing loads and an unwanted bias from the desired commands. In this paper, a hierarchical planning framework is proposed in which the footstep adaption task is separated from that of COM trajectory generation. A novel omnidirectional vehicle model and the inequalities deduced therefrom are adopted to describe the inter-pace connection relationship. A constrained nonlinear optimization problem is formulated and solved based on these inequalities to generate the optimal strides. A black-box optimization problem is then constructed and solved to determine the model constants using a surrogate-model-based approach. A simulation-based verification of the method and its implementation on a physical robot with a strictly limited computing capacity are reported. The proposed method is found to offer improved response quality while maintaining rapidity and stability, to reduce the online computing load required for reactive walking and to eliminate unnecessary bias from walking intentions.

In medical interventional procedures such as brachytherapy, biopsy and radio-frequency ablation, precise tracking through the preplanned desired trajectory is very essential. This important requirement is critical due to two major reasons: anatomical obstacle avoidance and accurate targeting for avoiding undesired radioactive dose exposure or damage to neighboring tissue and critical organs. Therefore, a precise control of the needling device in the unstructured environment in the presence of external disturbance is required to achieve accurate target reaching in clinical applications. In this paper, a shape memory alloy actuated active flexible needle controlled by an adaptive sliding mode controller is presented. The trajectory tracking performance of the needle is tested while having its actual movement in an artificial tissue phantom by giving various input reference trajectories such as multi-step and sinusoidal. Performance of the adaptive sliding mode controller is compared with that of the proportional, integral and derivative controller and is proved to be the effective method in the presence of the external disturbances.

This paper proposes a detailed investigation on the new neural-based feed-forward PID direct force control (FNN-PID-DF) approach applied to a highly nonlinear 2-axes pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM) manipulator in order to ameliorate its force output performance. Founded on the novel inverse neural NARX model dynamically identified to learn well all nonlinear characteristics of the contact force dynamics of the 2-axes PAM-based manipulator, the novel proposed neural FNN-PID-DF force controller is innovatively implemented in order to directly force control the 2-axes PAM robot system used as a rehabilitation device subjected to internal systematic interactions and external contact force deviations. The performance of the experimental tests has proven the advantages and merits of the new force control method compared to the classical PID force control method. The new neural FNN-PID-DF force controller guides the wrist/hand of subject/patient to successfully generate the predefined desired force values.

Most of the previous works on the motion control of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) assume that (i) the vehicle actuators are able to tolerate every level of the control signals, and (ii) the vehicle is equipped with the velocity sensors in all degrees of freedom. These assumptions are not desirable in practice. Toward this end, this paper addresses the trajectory tracking control of the underactuated AUVs with the limited torque, without the velocity measurements and under environmental disturbances in a three-dimensional space. At first, a variable transformation is introduced which helps us to derive a second-order dynamic model for underactuated AUVs. Then, a saturated tracking controller is proposed by employing the saturation functions to bound the closed-loop error variables. This technique reduces the risk of the actuators saturation by decreasing the amplitude of the generated control signals. In addition, a nonlinear saturated observer is introduced to remove the velocity sensors from the control system. The proposed controller copes with the uncertain vehicle parameters, and constant or time-varying environmental disturbances induced by the waves and ocean currents. Lyapunov's direct method is used to show the semi-global uniform ultimate boundedness of the tracking and state estimation errors. Finally, some simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for all projective transformations of the projectivized dual quaternion model of rigid body displacements that are induced by coordinate changes in moving and/or fixed frame. These transformations fix the quadrics of a pencil and preserve the two families of rulings of an exceptional three-dimensional quadric. Moreover, we fully characterize the constraint varieties of dyads with revolute and prismatic joints in the dual quaternion model. The constraint variety of a dyad with two revolute joints is a regular ruled quadric in a three-space that contains a “null quadrilateral.” If a revolute joint is replaced by a prismatic joint, this quadrilateral collapses into a pair of conjugate complex null lines and a real line but these properties are not sufficient to characterize such dyads. We provide a complete characterization by introducing a new invariant, the “Study fibre projectivity,” and we present examples that demonstrate its potential to explain hitherto not sufficiently well-understood phenomena.

This paper proposes a special non-symmetric topology of a 3PRR planar parallel kinematics mechanism, which naturally avoids singularity within the workspace and can be utilized for hybrid kinematics machine tools. Subsequently, single-objective and multi-objective optimizations are conducted to improve the performance. The workspace area and minimum eigenvalue, as well as the condition number of the homogenized Cartesian stiffness matrix across the workspace, have been chosen as the objectives in the optimization based on their relevance to the machining application. The single-objective optimization is conducted by using a single-objective genetic algorithm and a hybrid algorithm, whereas the multi-objective optimization is conducted by using a multi-objective genetic algorithm, a weighted sum single-objective genetic algorithm, and a weighted sum hybrid algorithm. It is shown that the single-objective optimization gives superior value in the optimized objective, while sacrificing the other objectives, whereas the multi-objective optimization compromises the improvement of all objectives by providing non-dominated values. In terms of the algorithms, it is shown that a hybrid algorithm can either verify or refine the optimal value obtained by a genetic algorithm.

During extraterrestrial planetary exploration programs, autonomous robots are deployed using a separate immovable lander and a rover. This mode has some limitations. In this paper, a concept of a novel legged robot with one passive limb and singularity property is introduced that has inbuilt features of a lander and a rover. Currently, studies have focused primarily on a performance analysis of the lander without a walking function. However, a systematic type synthesis of the legged mobile lander has not been studied. In this study, a new approach to the type synthesis used for the robot is proposed based on the Lie group theory. The overall concept and design procedures are proposed and described. The motion requirements of the robot and its legs, which are corresponding to the multi-function, are extracted and described. The layouts of the subgroups or submanifolds of the limbs are determined. The structures of the passive and actuated limbs are synthesized. Numerous structures of the legs with a passive limb are produced and listed corresponding to the desired displacement manifolds. Numerous novel structures of legs for the legged mobile lander are presented and listed. Then, four qualitative criteria or indexes are introduced. Based on the proposed criteria, a leg's configuration is selected as the best. A typical structure of the legged mobile lander is obtained by assembling the structures of the proposed legs. Finally, the typical robot is used as an example to verify the capabilities of the novel robot using a software simulation (ADAMS).

The possibility of operating in remote environments using teleoperation systems has been considered widely in the control literature. This paper presents a review on the discrete-time teleoperation systems, including issues such as stability, passivity and time delays. Using discrete-time methods for a master-slave teleoperation system can simplify control implementation. Varieties of control schemes have been proposed for these systems and major concerns such as passivity, stability and transparency have been studied. Recently, unreliable communication networks affected by packet loss and variable transmission delays have been received much attention. Thus, it is worth considering discrete-time theories for bilateral teleoperation architectures, which are formulated on the same lines as the continuous-time systems. Despite the extensive amount of researches concerning continuous-time teleoperation systems, only a few papers have been published on the analysis and controller design for discrete bilateral forms. This paper takes into account the challenges for the discrete structure of bilateral teleoperation systems and notifies the recent contributions in this area. The effect of sampling time on the stability-transparency trade-off and the task performance is taken into consideration in this review. These studies can help to design guidelines to have better transparency and stable teleoperation systems.

This paper proposes a collision avoidance method for the teleoperation of multiple non-holonomic mobile robots from multiple users. Each human operator drives a mobile robot, where each one performs an independent task in a common workspace. To avoid collisions, the proposed method only acts on the speed of the mobile robots; therefore, the human operator can freely drive the robot over the path he chooses to. The developed analysis allows us to assure that a solution is always achieved. Finally, the results of the experiments are shown, in order to test the performance of the proposed control scheme.

This paper presents a new type of forceps that consist of two microgrippers with the capability of direct force sensing, which enables grasping and manipulating forces at the tip of surgical instrument for minimally invasive robotic surgery. For the prototype design of the forceps, a double E-type vertical elastomer with four strain beams is presented, whose force-sensing principle is expounded. Thus, the forceps with the elastomer can be considered a compliant component, which provides tiny displacements that allow large strain, and the overall diameter is 10 mm. The sizes of the elastomer and forceps are successively determined by analyzing the relationship of several parameters and strain. Then, the linearity analysis of strain beams determines the positions to apply gauges for sensing. The two-dimensional force decoupling models for a single microgripper are proposed based on piecewise analytical polynomials of the strain difference and employed to develop a new three-dimensional force nonlinear decoupling algorithm based on double microgrippers, which realizes single-axial grasping and three-axial pulling forces. Finally, the required force-sensing performance of the proposed method is successfully verified in theory using finite-element simulations.

Safe and accurate navigation for autonomous trajectory tracking of quadrotors using monocular vision is addressed in this paper. A second order Sliding Mode (2-SM) control algorithm is used to track desired trajectories, providing robustness against model uncertainties and external perturbations. The time-scale separation of the translational and rotational dynamics allows to design position controllers by giving a desired reference in roll and pitch angles, which is suitable for practical validation in quad-rotors equipped with an internal attitude controller. A Lyapunov based analysis proved the closed-loop stability of the system despite the presence of unknown external perturbations. Monocular vision fused with inertial measurements are used to estimate the vehicle's pose with respect to unstructured scenes. In addition, the distance to potential collisions is detected and computed using the sparse depth map coming also from the vision algorithm. The proposed strategy is successfully tested in real-time experiments, using a low-cost commercial quadrotor.

Assume that the end-effector of a serial mechanism with n-degrees of freedom arrives at the position p0, where it can change arbitrarily the direction of its movement. The physical conditions imply that this change in direction also alters its velocity. The kinematic performance ellipse represents the velocities according to the new direction of the system, and thus solving the problem of which direction will correspond to a maximum or minimum (principal directions) magnitude of the corresponding velocity. In this paper, a new procedure to calculate these principal directions is presented and contrasted with two of the most common procedures employed in the field. All three procedures are considered in some detail, in order to understand their underlying concepts and, therefore, gain a deeper understanding of the physical situation. They are all proved in standard examples.

This paper presents a novel tendon-driven bio-inspired robotic hand design for in-hand manipulation. Many dexterous robot hands are able to produce adaptive grasping, but only a few human-sized hands worldwide are able to produce fine motions of the object in the hand. One of the challenges for the near future is to develop human-sized robot hands with human dexterity. Most of the existing hands considered in the literature suffer from dry friction which creates unwanted backlash and non-linearities. These problems limit the accurate control of the fingers and the capabilities of the hand. Such was the case with our first fully actuated dexterous robot hand: the Laboratoire de Mécanique des Solides (LMS) hand.

The mechanical design of the hand relies on a tendon-based transmission system. Developing a fully actuated dexterous robot hand requires the routing of the tendons through the finger for the actuation of each joint. This paper focuses on the evolution of the tendon routing; from the LMS hand to the new RoBioSS dexterous hand. The motion transmission in the new design creates purely linear coupling relations between joints and actuators. Experimental results using the same protocol for the previous hand and the new hand illustrate the evolution in the quality of the mechanical design. With the improvements of the mechanical behavior of the robotic fingers, the hand control software could be extensively simplified. The choice of a common architecture for all fingers makes it possible to consider the hand as a collaboration of four serial robots. Moreover, with the transparency of the motor-joint transmissions, we could use robust, industrial-grade cascaded feedback loops for the axis controls.

An inside-hand manipulation task concerning the manipulation of a bottle cap is presented at the end of the paper. As proof of the robustness of the hand, demonstrations of the hand's capabilities were carried out continuously over three days at SPS IPC Drives international exhibition in Nuremberg, in November 2016.

Bevel-tip needles have the potential to improve paracentetic precision and decrease paracentetic traumas. In order to drive bevel-tip needles precisely with the constrains of path length and path dangerousness, we propose a closed-loop control method that only requires the position of the needle tip and can be easily applied in a clinical setting. The control method is based on the path planning method proposed in this paper. To establish the closed-loop control method, a kinematic model of bevel-tip needles is first presented, and the relationship between the puncture path and controlled variables is established. Second, we transform the path planning method into a multi-objective optimization problem, which takes the path error, path length and path dangerousness into account. Multi-objective particle swarm optimization is employed to solve the optimization problem. Then, a control method based on path planning is presented. The current needle tip attitude is essential to plan an insertion path. We analyze two methods to obtain the tip attitude and compare their effects using both simulations and experiments. In the end, simulations and experiments in phantom tissue are executed and analyzed, the results show that our methods have high accuracy and have the ability to deal with the model parameter uncertainty.

A new minimally invasive surgical (MIS) robot consisting of a spherical remote center motion (RCM) mechanism with modular design is proposed. A multi-objective dimensional synthesis model is presented to obtain the excellent performance indices. There are four objectives: a global kinematic index, a compactness index, a global comprehensive stiffness index, and a global dynamic index. Other indices characterizing the design requirement, such as workspace, mechanical parameter, and mass, are chosen as constraints. A new decoupled mechanism is raised to solve the coupled motion between the linear platform and the four degrees of freedom (DoF) of surgical instrument as a result of post-driving motors. Another new mechanical decoupled method is proposed to eliminate the coupled motion between the wrist and the forceps, enhance the dexterity of surgical instrument, and improve the independence of each motor. Then, a 7-DoF MIS robotic prototype based on optimization results has been built up. Experiment results validate the effectiveness of the two mechanical decoupled methods. The position change of the RCM point, accuracy, and repeatability of the MIS robot meet the requirements of MIS. Successful animal experiments validate the effectiveness of the novel MIS robot.

In this work, we propose a method able to find user-oriented gait trajectories that can be used in powered lower limb orthosis applications. Most research related to active orthotic devices focuses on solving hardware issues. However, the problem of generating a set of joint trajectories that are user-oriented still persists. The proposed method uses principal component analysis to extract shared features from a gait dataset, taking into consideration gait-related variables such as joint angle information and the user's anthropometric features, used directly in an orthosis application. The trajectories of joint angles used by the model are represented by a given number of harmonics according to their respective Fourier series analyses. This representation allows better performance of the model, whose capability to generate gait information is validated through experiments using a real active orthotic device, analysing both joint motor energy consumption and user metabolic effort.

This work proposes a strategy for position control and obstacle avoidance in a quadcopter based on constrained generalized predictive control and geometric attitude control. The approach allows real-time trajectory tracking using optimal control actions and avoids collisions with static obstacles whose position is known. An experimental validation of the proposed controller is presented.

Hexapod robots are well suited for disaster rescuing tasks due to their stability and load capability. However, most current hexapod robots still rely on static gaits that largely limit their locomotion speed. This paper introduces a hierarchical control strategy to realize a dynamic alternating tripod trotting gait for a hexapod robot based on multi-modal impedance control. At the low level, a position-based impedance controller is developed to realize an adjustable compliant behavior for each leg. At the high level, a new gait controller is developed to generate a stable alternating tripod trotting gait, in which a gait state machine, a leg compliance modulation strategy, and a close-looped body attitude stabilizer are imposed. As a result, the alternating tripod trotting of the hexapod robot can be synchronized as the running of a bipedal robot with stable body attitude. Moreover, this control strategy was verified by experiments on a newly designed pony-sized disaster rescuing robot, HexbotIV, which successfully achieved a dynamic trotting gait with ability to resist the disturbances of mildly uneven terrains. Our control strategy as well as the experimental study can be a valuable reference for other hexapod robots and thus paves a way to the practical deployment of disaster rescuing robots.

This paper presents a novel system for human–robot interaction in object-grasping applications. Consisting of an RGB-D camera, a projector and a robot manipulator, the proposed system provides intuitive information to the human by analyzing the scene, detecting graspable objects and directly projecting numbers or symbols in front of objects. Objects are detected using a visual attention model that incorporates color, shape and depth information. The positions and orientations of the projected numbers are based on the shapes, positions and orientations of the corresponding objects. Users select a grasping target by indicating the corresponding number. Projected arrows are then created on the fly to guide a robotic arm to grasp the selected object using visual servoing and deliver the object to the human user. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate how the system is used in robot grasping tasks.