Environmentally conscious manufacturing and product recovery (ECMPRO): A review of the state of the art

In this paper, an attempt at summarizing the evolution and the state of the art in the field of robot hands is made. In such exposition, a critical evaluation of what in the author's view are the leading ideas and emerging trends is privileged with respect to exhaustiveness of citations. The survey is focused mainly on three types of functional requirements a machine hand can be assigned in an artificial system, namely, manipulative dexterity, grasp robustness, and human operability. A basic distinction is made between hands designed for mimicking the human anatomy and physiology,and hands designed to meet restricted, practical requirements. In the latter domain, arguments are presented in favor of a -minimalistic" attitude in the design of hands for practical applications, i.e., use the least number of actuators, the simplest set of sensors, etc., for a given task. To achieve this rather obvious engineering goal is a challenge to our community. The paper illustrates some of the new sometimes difficult, problems that are brought about by building and controlling simpler, more practical devices.

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Hands for dexterous manipulation and robust grasping: a difficult road toward simplicity

Any device which senses information such as shape, texture, softness, temperature, vibration or shear and normal forces, by physical contact or touch, can be termed a tactile sensor. The importance of tactile sensor technology was recognized in the 1980s, along with a realization of the importance of computers and robotics. Despite this awareness, tactile sensors failed to be strongly adopted in industrial or consumer markets. In this paper, previous expectations of tactile sensors have been reviewed and the reasons for their failure to meet these expectations are discussed. The evolution of different tactile transduction principles, state of art designs and fabrication methods, and their pros and cons, are analyzed. From current development trends, new application areas for tactile sensors have been proposed. Literature from the last few decades has been revisited, and areas which are not appropriate for the use of tactile sensors have been identified. Similarly, the challenges that this technology needs to overcome in order to find its place in the market have been highlighted.

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A review of tactile sensing technologies with applications in biomedical engineering

Vision guided robotics has been one of the major research issue for more than three decades. The more recent technological development facilitated the advancement in the area which has resulted in a number of successful and even commercial systems using off–the–shelf hardware. The applications of visually guided systems are many: from intelligent homes to automotive industry. However, one of the open and commonly stated problems in the area is the need for exchange of experiences and research ideas. In our opinion, a good starting point for this is to advertise the successes and propose a common terminology in form of a survey paper. The paper concentrates on different types of visual servoing: image based, position based and 2 1/2D visual servoing. Different issues concerning both the hardware and software requirements are considered and the most prominent contributions are reviewed. The proposed terminology is used to introduce a young researcher and lead the experts in the field through a three decades long historical field of vision guided robotics. We also include a number of real–world examples from our own research providing not only a conceptual framework but also illustrating most of the issues covered in the paper.

Survey on Visual Servoing for Manipulation

Purpose – Reviews the benefits and potential application of tactile sensors for use with robots.Design/methodology/approach – Includes the most recent advances in both the design/manufacturing of various tactile sensors and their applications in different industries. Although these types of sensors have been adopted in a considerable number of areas, the applications such as, medical, agricultural/livestock and food, grippers/manipulators design, prosthetic, and environmental studies have gained more popularity and are presented in this paper.Findings – Robots can perform very useful and repetitive tasks in controlled environments. However, when the robots are required to handle the unstructured and changing environments, there is a need for more elaborate means to improve their performance. In this scenario, tactile sensors can play a major role. In the unstructured environments, the robots must be able to grasp objects (or tissues, in the case of medical robots) and move objects from one location to ano...

Advances in tactile sensors design/manufacturing and its impact on robotics applications – a review

For environmental and economical reasons it is requested today to turn away from deposition and incineration of end-of-life products. This paper gives an overview of more than 10 years of research to gain re-usable, valuable modules from electronic devices by automated disassembly. Using a video camera recorder and PCs as examples, required equipment and suitable strategies are discussed and exemplified by respective experiments. The layout of an overall disassembly line including appropriate software structures is put forward. Further research necessary to evaluate the economical aspects is indicated.

On strategies and solutions for automated disassembly of electronic devices

This paper discusses the peg-in-hole task performed by a system integrating a dextrous hand, a 6-DOF robot and a camera. It is shown how the starting conditions of the final insertion only performed by the fingers are affected by the previous stages. Based on the experimental findings, some criteria for the overall system design and the required manipulation capabilities of the gripper are derived. With respect to this performance evaluation a modular concept for solving insertion tasks with a multifingered gripper is presented. The object manipulation is realized by primitives which are executed in dependence on various assembly states. The implementation of this approach is described and beside a theoretical characterization, experimental results are given.

A modular approach for solving the peg-in-hole problem with a multifingered gripper

Towards autonomous robotic servicing : Using an integrated hand-arm-eye system for manipulating unknown objects

Abstract The discussion paper “I4.0 language: vocabulary, message structure and semantic interaction protocols of the I4.0 language”, published by the working group “Semantics and Interaction of Industry 4.0 Components” of the GMA, also known as UAG of the AG 1 of the platform Industry 4.0 (I4.0), presented a concept for the language between I4.0 components. The main conclusion is: The increasing networking and cooperation of components enable new forms of organization and control. A clear understanding of machine interactions paves self-organized and self-optimized value creation in I4.0. Agent-based systems are an option for the realization of such I4.0 architectures. Due to their features, software agents are particularly well suited for representing I4.0 components and enabling I4.0 interactions. Agents are not only able to understand the necessary machine languages, but also the essential mechanisms for self-organization and self-optimization in value creation. The paper focuses on I4.0 scenarios described by the Platform I4.0 that describes challenges for the industry towards its digital future and demonstrates how emerging challenges in the area of I4.0 can be met with the help of agent-based systems.

Matthias Seitz

Papers

On strategies and solutions for automated disassembly of electronic devices

A modular approach for solving the peg-in-hole problem with a multifingered gripper

Towards autonomous robotic servicing : Using an integrated hand-arm-eye system for manipulating unknown objects

Multi-agent systems to enable Industry 4.0

Vision Assisted Disassembly Using a Dexterous Hand-Arm-System: An Example and Experimental Results