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

This paper reports on the existing robot force control algorithms and their composition based on the review of 75 papers on this subject. The objective is to provide a pragmatic exposition with speciality on their differences and different application conditions, and to give a guide of the existing robot force control algorithms. The previous work can be categorized into discussion, design and/or application of fundamental force control techniques, stability analysis of the various control algorithms, and the advanced methods. Advanced methods combine the fundamental force control techniques with advanced control algorithms such as adaptive, robust and learning control strategies.

An overview of robot force control

Fuzzy logic control, due to its simple control structure, easy and cost-effective design, has been successfully employed to the application of guidance and control in robotic fields. This paper aims to review fuzzy-logic-based guidance and control in an important branch of robots—marine robotic vehicles. First, guidance and motion forms including the maneuvering, path following, trajectory tracking, and position stabilization are described. Subsequently, the application of three major classes of fuzzy logic control, including the conventional fuzzy control (Mamdani fuzzy control and Takagi–Sugeno–Kang fuzzy control), adaptive fuzzy control (self-tuning fuzzy control and direct/indirect adaptive fuzzy control), and hybrid fuzzy control (fuzzy PID control, fuzzy sliding mode control, and neuro-fuzzy control) are presented. In particular, we summarize the design and analysis process of direct/indirect adaptive fuzzy control and fuzzy PID control in marine robotic fields. In addition, two comparative results between hybrid fuzzy control and the corresponding single control are provided to illustrate the superiority of hybrid fuzzy control. Finally, trends of the fuzzy future in marine robotic vehicles are concluded based on its state of the art.

Survey on Fuzzy-Logic-Based Guidance and Control of Marine Surface Vehicles and Underwater Vehicles

This paper presents adaptive impedance control of an upper limb robotic exoskeleton using biological signals. First, we develop a reference musculoskeletal model of the human upper limb and experimentally calibrate the model to match the operator’s motion behavior. Then, the proposed novel impedance algorithm transfers stiffness from human operator through the surface electromyography (sEMG) signals, being utilized to design the optimal reference impedance model. Considering the unknown deadzone effects in the robot joints and the absence of the precise knowledge of the robot’s dynamics, an adaptive neural network control incorporating with a high-gain observer is developed to approximate the deadzone effect and robot’s dynamics and drive the robot tracking desired trajectories without velocity measurements. In order to verify the robustness of the proposed approach, the actual implementation has been performed using a real robotic exoskeleton and a human operator.

Adaptive Impedance Control for an Upper Limb Robotic Exoskeleton Using Biological Signals

In this article we present two nonlinear force controllers based on the sliding mode control theory. For this purpose we use the detailed mathematical model of the pneumatic system developed in the first part of the paper. The first controller is based on the complete model, and exhibits superior performance both in the numerical simulation and experiments, but requires complex online computations for the control law. The second controller neglects the valve dynamics and the time delay due to connecting tubes. The performance of this controller exhibits slight degradation for configurations with relatively short tubes, and at frequencies up to 20 Hz. At higher frequencies or when long connecting tubes are used, however, the performance exhibits significant degradation compared to the one provided by the full order controller.@S0022-0434~00!00703-6#

A High Performance Pneumatic Force Actuator System: Part II—Nonlinear Controller Design

Pneumatic robot manipulators are characterized by high-order, time-variant actuator dynamics, nonlinearities due to compressibility of air, external disturbances such as static and Coulomb friction, and wide range of payload variations. Conventional PID controllers suffer from problems of gain tuning under these conditions. In this paper, a new control algorithm is proposed for the position and trajectory control of pneumatic actuators based on the sliding mode control approach. The stability of motion is proved for the case of a linear, time-invariant switching surface. A disadvantage of using sliding mode control for third- and higher-order mechanical systems is the need for acceleration feedback. In this paper, to overcome this difficulty we propose the use of differential pressure. The proposed controller is simple, easy to implement, and robust to payload and parametric variations. The effectiveness of the new scheme for position and trajectory control is illustrated by experiments on an industrial piston-driven cylindrical actuator with proportional valves.

Practical Design of a Sliding Mode Controller for Pneumatic Actuators

Recent research has shown that robust and precise high-speed control of pneumatic actuators is practicable, by application of advanced control techniques such as model-based adaptive and sliding-mode control. However, the resulting need for full state-based feedback and feedforward control-in particular, the measurement of air pressures-increases both the cost and complexity of the overall system. In this paper, we consider the problem of design of observers to estimate the chamber pressure variables in a cylinder actuator. Since the cylinder pressures are not simultaneously observable because of the nature of cylinder dynamics, we first propose a continuous gain observer in which the pressure on one side of the cylinder is measured and the pressure on the other side is estimated. Next, we propose a sliding-mode observer where numerically estimated acceleration is used in order to observe both pressures, with ultimate bounded stability. A sliding-mode controller is proposed, whose sensitivity to errors under the sliding-mode observer is studied. The proposed observers are simple, effective and easy to implement. Results of experimental implementation illustrate the practical effectiveness of the new observers.

Pressure observer-controller design for pneumatic cylinder actuators

This paper presents an intelligent controller for underwater vehicle-manipulator systems (UVMS) based on the neuro-fuzzy approach. The controller is composed of fuzzy PD control with membership function tuning by linguistic hedge. A neural network compensator approximates the dynamics of the UVMS in decentralized form. The new controller has the advantages of simplicity of implementation due to decentralized design, precision, and robustness to payload variations and hydrodynamic disturbances. It has significantly low energy consumption compared to both the conventional PD and conventional fuzzy control methods. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is illustrated by results of simulations for a six degrees of freedom autonomous underwater vehicle with a three degrees of freedom on-board manipulator.

Neuro-fuzzy control of underwater vehicle-manipulator systems

When large numbers of children play in a playground, part of the power of their play could be usefully harnessed resulting in large energy storage. This stored energy can then be converted for basic, low-power, applications in the school such as lighting, communication, or operating fans. Energy can be produced through the use of pneumatic (i.e., compressed air) systems such as cylinders, motors, valves, and regulators for the conversion of human power of children's play in school playgrounds and other public places. The energy of the compressed air can then be converted to electricity for purposes such as lighting and communication. This provides a low-cost, low-resource means of generation of electricity, especially for use in developing countries.

Pneumatic human power conversion system based on children's play

Pneumatic actuators are among a variety of actuators under active study by the robotics community, for the advantages they offer over conventional electric actuators widely used in present-day robots. So far, however, only pneumatic cylinders which provide linear actuation have been mainly studied in literature. Air motors are the pneumatic counterparts of electric motors, providing rotary actuation. They have several advantages over electric motors, especially high power-to-weight and power-to-size ratios, good compliance, and resistance to environmental hazards. We consider the model-based control of vane-type air motors which are the most commonly used class of air motors. Various control problems are considered namely, position control, trajectory control, adaptive control, and force control. Results of experimental implementation on an industrial vane-type air motor illustrate the effectiveness of the air motor as a high-performance rotary actuator.

S.R. Pandian

Papers

Practical Design of a Sliding Mode Controller for Pneumatic Actuators

Pressure observer-controller design for pneumatic cylinder actuators

Neuro-fuzzy control of underwater vehicle-manipulator systems

Pneumatic human power conversion system based on children's play

Control performance of an air motor-can air motors replace electric motors?