Articulated robot

About: Articulated robot is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4364 publications have been published within this topic receiving 52442 citations.

Autonomous mobile robot in pipe for piping operations

Abstract: An autonomous mobile robot that can move autonomously in a horizontal pipe, a vertical pipe and an elbow joint with bending angle of 90/spl deg/. Furthermore, the robot has a vision sensor and an operating arm in front of the robot body, and accordingly it has functions to execute piping operations, such as inspection of pipe surface, welding of the pipes and so on. The robot is constructed by several units with four wheels connected by universal joints each other. The robot is controlled by a host personal computer and one-chip microcomputers. As the results of operating experiments, the effectiveness of the robot system in autonomous movement in a pipe and an elbow joint and automatic tracking of a welding line was confirmed.

Modelling and control of flexible robot arms

Abstract: This paper surveys modeling and control problems of flexible robot arm systems. The flexibilities of the robot arm system are divided into two categories, namely the flexibility due to the nonlinearity in the drive system and the flexibility due to the elasticity of the arms which has properties of distributed parameter system. For these two systems, various modeling methods and control laws are reviewed, along with a discussion of the effect of the sensor location.

Action sequencing using dynamic movement primitives

Abstract: General-purpose autonomous robots must have the ability to combine the available sensorimotor knowledge in order to solve more complex tasks. Such knowledge is often given in the form of movement primitives. In this paper, we investigate the problem of sequencing of movement primitives. We selected nonlinear dynamic systems as the underlying sensorimotor representation because they provide a powerful machinery for the specification of primitive movements. We propose two new methodologies which both ensure that consecutive movement primitives are joined together in a continuous way (up to second-order derivatives). The first is based on proper initialization of the third-order dynamic motion primitives and the second uses online Gaussian kernel functions modification of the second-order dynamic motion primitives. Both methodologies were validated by simulation and by experimentally using a Mitsubishi PA-10 articulated robot arm. Experiments comprehend pouring, table wiping, and carrying a glass of liquid.

Self-contained wall-climbing robot with closed link mechanism

Abstract: A self-contained wall-climbing robot called MRWALLSPECT-II, is presented. The robot has characteristic features in the kinematic design of the leg with closed link mechanism. It reduces the number of actuators compared to the previous ones and makes it possible to have high force-to-weight ratio. Those are enabled by adopting a simple and robust gait pattern mimicking a living creature. Also, as the robot is designed to be a self-contained one, it includes all the components such as air compressors, vacuum generators, an embedded controller, batteries, a CCD camera, sensors, motors and electronics in itself without any tether cable. Its communication with the operating site in the ground is conducted through wireless LAN. In the paper, its principles of design and configuration of the robot are introduced.

Contact instability of the direct drive robot when constrained by a rigid environment

Abstract: A sufficient condition for the stability of robot manipulators in constrained maneuvers is derived. Attention is focused on the class of direct drive robots whose rigid links dominate the robot's dynamic behavior; compared to the robot, the environment is assumed to be infinitely rigid. The stability of the manipulator-environment system is investigated, and a bound for stable manipulation is determined. This bound is verified via simulation and experiment on the Minnesota direct drive robot. >