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 are developing a multi-function haptic device that displays pressure, vibration, shear force, and temperature to the skin of upper extremity amputees, especially those who have undergone targeted nerve reinnervation (TRI) surgery. This paper presents the design of the thermal display portion of this device. Through psychophysical temperature discrimination tests, the unique thermal response characteristics of intact hands and TRI-chests are explored.

/pdf/on-the-design-of-a-thermal-display-for-upper-extremity-355hulynmy.pdf

On the Design of a Thermal Display for Upper Extremity Prosthetics

We have been developing a miniature multi-function haptic device - a tactor - that generates the sense of pressure, vibration, shear force, and temperature for upper extremity amputees, especially those who have undergone targeted nerve reinnervation surgery. This paper discusses first the design of the thermal display portion of the tactor, second a pilot study of a thermal display using the tactor.

A Pilot Study of a Thermal Display Using a Miniature Tactor for Upper Extremity Prosthesis

Passive mechanical wrists, capable of imparting a desired damping matrix to a grasped workpiece are discussed. The passive mechanical wrist is to be programmable-it can adopt a wide range of damping matrices-by virtue of a number of tunable dampers which interconnect the joints. The range of damping matrices that such a wrist can adopt is studied, purely by tuning its dampers. It is found that a redundant wrist has a broader range of realizable damping matrices than a non-redundant wrist. A kinematic Jacobian relates the task-space damping matrix to a similar matrix in the hydraulic space of the tunable dampers (joint-space). For redundant wrists, the transformation of damping matrices between task-space and joint-space is not straightforward. The causal directions along which the transformations are linear are identified. It is shown that the joint-space matrices which are obtained as linear transformations of desired task-space matrices are all singular. Many realizable joint-space matrices (corresponding to a desired task-space damping matrix) are shown to exist which are discovered by linear transformations. >

/pdf/task-space-joint-space-damping-transformations-for-passive-19evxvuvv0.pdf

Task-space/joint-space damping transformations for passive redundant manipulators

Haptic interfaces controlled by a single fingertip or hand-held probe tend to display surface features individually, requiring serial search for multiple features. Novel surface haptic devices, however, have the potential to provide displays to multiple fingertips simultaneously, affording the possibility of parallel search. Using variable-friction surface haptic devices, we investigated the ability of participants to detect a target feature among a set of distractors in parallel across the fingers. We found that searches for a material property (slipperiness) and an illusory shape (virtual hole) were significantly impaired by distractors, while search for an abrupt discontinuity (virtual edge) was not. The efficiency of search for edges rendered by surface haptics suggests that they engage primitive detectors in the haptic perceptual system.

Search Efficiency for Tactile Features Rendered by Surface Haptic Displays

We envision cobotic infinitely-variable transmis- sions (IVTs) as an enabling technology for haptics and pros- thetics that will allow for increases in the dynamic range of these devices while simultaneously permitting reductions in actuator size and power requirements Use of cobotic IVTs eliminates the need to make compromises on output flow and effort, which are inherent to choosing a fixed transmission ratio drivetrain The result is a mechanism with enhanced dynamic range that extends continuously from a completely clutched state to a highly backdrivable state This high dynamic range allows cobotic devices to control impedance with a high level of fidelity In this paper, we discuss these and other motivations for using parallel cobotic transmission architecture in prosthetic devices I INTRODUCTION Four key requirements of robotic technologies used for prosthetics, orthotics and rehabilitation robotics are low weight, low energy consumption, safety and controllability We propose cobotic technology as a transmission architecture that can address all of these issues Given a set of design criteria for a multi-degree-of-freedom mechanism, such as maximum flow, maximum effort and maximum power, we find that a cobot can meet these requirements with reduced numbers of high power actuators, reduced size requirements for those actuators and increased power efficiency relative to conventional actuation systems (1)

Michael A. Peshkin

Papers

On the Design of a Thermal Display for Upper Extremity Prosthetics

A Pilot Study of a Thermal Display Using a Miniature Tactor for Upper Extremity Prosthesis

Task-space/joint-space damping transformations for passive redundant manipulators

Search Efficiency for Tactile Features Rendered by Surface Haptic Displays

Cobotic architecture for prosthetics.