Planning algorithms are impacting technical disciplines and industries around the world, including robotics, computer-aided design, manufacturing, computer graphics, aerospace applications, drug design, and protein folding. This coherent and comprehensive book unifies material from several sources, including robotics, control theory, artificial intelligence, and algorithms. The treatment is centered on robot motion planning but integrates material on planning in discrete spaces. A major part of the book is devoted to planning under uncertainty, including decision theory, Markov decision processes, and information spaces, which are the “configuration spaces” of all sensor-based planning problems. The last part of the book delves into planning under differential constraints that arise when automating the motions of virtually any mechanical system. Developed from courses taught by the author, the book is intended for students, engineers, and researchers in robotics, artificial intelligence, and control theory as well as computer graphics, algorithms, and computational biology.

Planning Algorithms: Introductory Material

http://ee.sharif.edu/~miap/Files/A%20Survey%20of%20Medical%20Image%20Registration.pdf

A survey of medical image registration.

A survey of models, analysis tools and compensation methods for the control of machines with friction

Skin plays an important role in mediating our interactions with the world. Recreating the properties of skin using electronic devices could have profound implications for prosthetics and medicine. The pursuit of artificial skin has inspired innovations in materials to imitate skin's unique characteristics, including mechanical durability and stretchability, biodegradability, and the ability to measure a diversity of complex sensations over large areas. New materials and fabrication strategies are being developed to make mechanically compliant and multifunctional skin-like electronics, and improve brain/machine interfaces that enable transmission of the skin's signals into the body. This Review will cover materials and devices designed for mimicking the skin's ability to sense and generate biomimetic signals.

Pursuing prosthetic electronic skin.

Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) has recently received considerable attention in the academic community, in labs, in technology companies, and through the media. Because of this attention, it is desirable to present a survey of HRI to serve as a tutorial to people outside the field and to promote discussion of a unified vision of HRI within the field. The goal of this review is to present a unified treatment of HRI-related problems, to identify key themes, and discuss challenge problems that are likely to shape the field in the near future. Although the review follows a survey structure, the goal of presenting a coherent "story" of HRI means that there are necessarily some well-written, intriguing, and influential papers that are not referenced. Instead of trying to survey every paper, we describe the HRI story from multiple perspectives with an eye toward identifying themes that cross applications. The survey attempts to include papers that represent a fair cross section of the universities, government efforts, industry labs, and countries that contribute to HRI, and a cross section of the disciplines that contribute to the field, such as human, factors, robotics, cognitive psychology, and design.

/pdf/human-robot-interaction-a-survey-4q8yi606a9.pdf

Human-Robot Interaction: A Survey

We propose a new lateral force feedback device, the UltraShiver, which employs a combination of in-plane ultrasonic oscillation (around 30 kHz) and out-of-plane electroadhesion. It can achieve a strong active lateral force (400 mN) on the bare fingertip while operating silently. The lateral force is a function of pressing force, lateral vibration velocity, and electroadhesive voltage, as well as the relative phase between the velocity and voltage. In this paper, we perform experiments to investigate characteristics of the UltraShiver and their influence on lateral force.

UltraShiver: Lateral force feedback on a bare fingertip via ultrasonic oscillation and electroadhesion

Two continuously variable transmissions are examined, one that relates a pair of linear speeds and another that relates a pair of angular speeds. These devices are elemental in the design of cobots, a new class of robot that creates virtual guiding surfaces to aid a human operator in assembly tasks. Both of these transmissions are traction drive mechanisms that rely on the support of either lateral or longitudinal forces across rolling contacts with spin. When a rolling contact between elastic bodies or even between rigid bodies in spin is called upon to transmit a tractive force, kinematic creep develops, expressing a departure from the intended rolling constraint. Creep in turn gives rise to nonideal properties in a cobot’s virtual guiding surfaces. This paper develops simple models of the two transmissions by expressing the relative velocity field in the contact patch between rolling bodies in terms of creep and spin. Coulomb friction laws are applied in a quasi-static analysis to produce complete force-motion models. These models may be used to evaluate a cobot’s ability to support forces against its virtual guiding surfaces. @DOI: 10.1115/1.1517560#

/pdf/kinematic-creep-in-a-continuously-variable-transmission-17yzjvqymq.pdf

Kinematic Creep in a Continuously Variable Transmission: Traction Drive Mechanics for Cobots

This paper presents the design of a bioinspired artificial fingertip that resembles the mechanical behavior of a human fingertip under conditions of both static deformation and high frequency excitation The artificial fingertip is constructed around a deformable spherical membrane filled with a cellulose sponge, itself connected to a rigid structure that acts as a bone Force-deformation characteristics and response to a transient mechanical perturbation are both shown to be in good qualitative agreement with those of a real finger More importantly, the fingertip exhibits friction reduction when interacting with TPads (variable friction tactile displays based on transverse ultrasonic vibrations) Comparison with artificial fingertips that do not exhibit friction reduction suggests that mechanical damping characteristics play a key role in the amount of friction reduction achieved

Bioinspired artificial fingertips that exhibit friction reduction when subjected to transverse ultrasonic vibrations

Texture modeling strives to encapsulate the important properties of texture in a concise representation for interpretation, storage, and rendering. Models for tactile texture have yet to describe a representation that is both perceptually complete and sufficiently compact. In this work, we take inspiration from models of visual and auditory texture and propose a spatial spectrogram representation of tactile texture that separates localized features from textural aspects using a windowed Fourier decomposition. We investigate the length scales at which humans can perceive localized features, and represent textures as spectrograms that capture those local features. Additionally, we demonstrate a reconstruction algorithm capable of recreating texture from a spectrogram representation with no perceptual consequence.

/pdf/modeling-and-synthesis-of-tactile-texture-with-spatial-33kqjmnr3w.pdf

Modeling and synthesis of tactile texture with spatial spectrograms for display on variable friction surfaces


 Cobots are capable of producing virtual surfaces of high quality, using mechanical transmission elements as their basic element in place of conventional motors. Most cobots built to date have used steerable wheels as their transmission elements. We describe how continuously variable transmissions (CVTs) can be used in this capacity for a cobot with revolute joints.
 The design of an “arm-like” cobot with a three-dimensional workspace is described. This cobot can implement virtual surfaces and other effects in a spherical workspace approximately 1.5 meters in diameter. Novel elements of this cobot include the use of a power wheel that couples three CVTs that are connected in parallel.

Michael A. Peshkin

Papers

UltraShiver: Lateral force feedback on a bare fingertip via ultrasonic oscillation and electroadhesion

Kinematic Creep in a Continuously Variable Transmission: Traction Drive Mechanics for Cobots

Bioinspired artificial fingertips that exhibit friction reduction when subjected to transverse ultrasonic vibrations

Modeling and synthesis of tactile texture with spatial spectrograms for display on variable friction surfaces

Three revolute cobot using CVTs in parallel