Browse Proceedings

This paper extends the capabilities of the harmonic potential field approach to planning to cover the situation where the workspace of a robot cannot be segmented into geometrical subregions each having an attribute of its own. Instead the suggested ...

This paper demonstrates the ability of the harmonic potential field (HPF) planning approach to generate a provably-correct, constrained, well-behaved trajectory for a rigid, nonholonomic robot (a tractor-trailer robot is not rigid) in a stationary, ...

This paper presents the estimation of the force applied by a piezocantilever dedicated to micromanipulation/microassembly. Relative to previous works, the presented method avoids the reliance on the force dynamics on the characteristics of the micro-...

This paper presents our study over the effect of Complementary Energy Feedback on Virtual Slope Walking, while Virtual Slope Walking is our new biped gait generation method inspired by Passive Dynamic Walking. The energy feedback strength is defined and ...

In recent work, we introduced the notion of a construction tree of simplices for a linkage L under distance constraints, and showed that the deformation space DSpace(L) of such an L (i.e., its configuration space CSpace(L) modulo rigid motions of ...

The self motion of a kinematically redundant robotic limb with single degree of redundancy is analyzed, focusing thereby on the nonlinear self-motion component. The role of this component has been completely ignored in past studies on self motion. It is ...

A Cable-Driven Locomotion Interface employs two independent cable-driven haptic foot platforms constrained in six degrees of freedom (6-DOF). Its control system and its geometry are designed for performing a wide range of trajectories that could ...

The model-based control of robotic manipulators relies on an exact model of the manipulator. Redundantly actuated PKM posses the ability to exhibit internal prestress that does not affect its environment. This allows for a purposeful distribution of ...

Based on the distance algorithm by Gilbert et al., this paper presents a numerical algorithm for computing the intersection of the boundary of a compact convex set with a ray emanating from an interior point of the set, which is known as the ray-...

In this paper, an original method about heavy vehicles rollover risk prediction is presented and validated experimentally. It is based on the calculation of the LTR (Load Transfer Ratio) which depends on the estimated vertical forces using high order ...

A main difficulty that arises in the context of probabilistic localization is the design of an appropriate observation model, i.e., determining the likelihood of a sensor measurement given the pose of the robot and a map of the environment. Many ...

A new golf swing robot performing high-speed golf swings has been developed by the authors. This paper deals with the motion planning problem of the golf swing. At first, the reverse time symmetry and single pendulum inherences in manipulator dynamics ...

In this paper, a semi-supervised particle filter approach is proposed for visual tracking. The combination of semi-supervised learning and particle filter is very natural since the unlabelled samples are generated by particle propagation. In addition, ...

Generic manipulators possess the desireable properties that their set of singulartities is a smooth manifold, and that the drop of rank of the manipulator Jacobian is bounded. A sufficient condition for genericity is the transverse-regularity of its ...

Using dynamic programming (DP), this paper presents a multi-level supervisory control implementation in the standard hierarchical discrete-event control framework. For a class of hierarchically consistent discrete-event systems, the DP algorithm ...

Probabilistic path planning techniques have proven to be vital for finding and validating solutions for difficult industrial assembly tasks. Nevertheless, the failure of a path planner to find a solution to a task does not suggest how to correct the ...

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is a well-studied problem in mobile robotics. However, the majority of the proposed techniques for SLAM rely on the use of accurate and dense measurements provided by laser rangefinders to correctly localize ...

This paper introduces a new two-degree-of-freedom parallel manipulator producing two translations in the vertical plane. One drawback of existing robots built to realize those dof is their lack of rigidity along the transversal axis, another one being ...

This paper describes a multi-joint robot finger with soft compliant mechanism for safe and comfortable nursing-care services. In proposed mechanism, we utilize 2 different types of elastic elements at fingertip and MP joint (Metacarpa-Phalangeal Joint), ...

This paper presents the design, fabrication, and application of an piezoelectrically driven microgripper integrated sidewall piezoresistive force sensor for measuring the gripping force. Surface and bulk micromachining technology is employed to ...

In a musculoskeletal structure, the internal force among muscles plays an important role. Changing the internal force enables to control not only joint angles but also impedance, so that vertebrate animals can produce a motion according to a situation. ...

We present an application of machine learning to the semi-automatic synthesis of robust servo-trackers for underwater robotics. In particular, we investigate an approach based on the use of Boosting for robust visual tracking of color objects in an ...

This paper introduces and describes a new type of wheeled locomotor referred to as a "four-steering, planar fivebar linkage-walker." This wheeled locomotor is a nonholonomic mechanical system that consists of five links, five rotational joints, and four ...

Recently, cognitive psychologists and others have turned their attention to the formerly neglected study of shadows, and the information they purvey. These studies show that the human perceptual system values information from shadows very highly, ...

This paper presents a ball-joint-like three-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) permanent magnet (PM) spherical actuator which features a ball-shaped rotor with multiple PM poles and a spherical iron stator with air-core coils. Torque output of this PM spherical ...

This paper addresses the problem of feature-based robot localization in large-size environments. With recent progress in SLAM techniques, it has become crucial for a robot to estimate the self-position in real-time with respect to a large-size map that ...

In this paper, we consider "sinus-lifting motion" which is the effective motion of a snake for rapid movement consisting of lifting some parts of its body off the ground, and switching the lifted and grounded parts dynamically. This motion is analyzed ...

This paper investigates the on-line autonomous distribution for landmarks and the active exploration in environment without or lack of landmarks/features, such as disaster conditions and polar region. In such situation, the robot enters the environment ...

The MACCEPA (Mechanically Adjustable Compliance and Controllable Equilibrium Position Actuator) is an electric actuator of which the compliance and equilibrium position are fully independently controllable and both are set by a dedicated servomotor. In ...

A static anti-integrator-windup controller design method is proposed for zero-gravity planar robot manipulators. The asymptotic stability is achieved using a simple static anti-windup gain matrix for PI or PID controllers. The control performance is ...