Articulated robot

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

An Ultralightweight and Living Legged Robot

Abstract: In this study, we describe the most ultralightweight living legged robot to date that makes it a strong candidate for a search and rescue mission. The robot is a living beetle with a wireless electronic backpack stimulator mounted on its thorax. Inheriting from the living insect, the robot employs a compliant body made of soft actuators, rigid exoskeletons, and flexure hinges. Such structure would allow the robot to easily adapt to any complex terrain due to the benefit of soft interface, self-balance, and self-adaptation of the insect without any complex controller. The antenna stimulation enables the robot to perform not only left/right turning but also backward walking and even cessation of walking. We were also able to grade the turning and backward walking speeds by changing the stimulation frequency. The power required to drive the robot is low as the power consumption of the antenna stimulation is in the order of hundreds of microwatts. In contrast to the traditional legged robots, this ro...

Modeling and control of a Delta-3 robot

Abstract: This Master Thesis describes the mathematical modeling of a Delta-3 robot actuated by motors and drive units developed by ELAU GmbH. A given model of the ELAU GmbH drive unit and motor is used when building the Delta-3 robot model including three drive units, one for each motor to be able to actuate the three upper arms. The Delta-3 robot model is divided into kinematics and dynamics parts. The kinematics is used to calculate the trajectories for the three robot arms (joint space) and the corresponding motion of the robot travelling plate (Cartesian space). The Thesis also looks into the robot dynamics, so the coupling effect between the three arms is taken into account in the Simulink model. Different trajectories created with ELAU GmbHs own software are imported to Matlab workspace and simulated with the Simulink model. The results from the Simulink model are compared with the results from a real Delta-3 robot driven by ELAU GmbH hardware and software. The Jacobian matrix for the Delta-3 robot is also calculated to be used in the equations for the coupling effect between the three arms. The Jacobian matrix is also implemented in ELAU GmbH software to be able to calculate the joint velocity or joint acceleration when the TCP velocity or TCP acceleration is known and vice versa. These results can then be used in equations for calculating the torque which is needed for each of the three motors to actuate the upper arms along with the desired TCP trajectory. The torque calculations can be done offline so the real robot don't have to be running, which gives the opportunity to see how much torque each motor needs so the robot is able to follow the desired trajectory for the robots travelling plate. Experiments with comparison between the Simulink model and the real robot are done and the results of the measured values are shown in the Thesis. Also the experiments for the implementation of the Jacobian matrix in ELAU GmbH software are shown in the Thesis. (Less)

Balance motion generation for a humanoid robot playing table tennis

Abstract: Rapid advancement in the field of humanoid robot has been on-going in the last ten years, however, the common goal that robot can interact with human being to achieve a complicate task remains a difficult problem. We take table tennis playing as a demonstration to study how a humanoid robot shall interact with the environment and human beings and developed a humanoid robot ‘Kong’ that can play table tennis and rally with a human player continuously. This paper focuses on robot's stability keeping during table tennis playing. This problem becomes crucial due to the recoil force resulted from large arm acceleration. We introduce an optimal momentum compensation method and a position-based impedance control scheme to generate body motion so that the robot absorb the recoil force and ensure successful hit to the ball. The experimental results demonstrate that the robot is capable to rally with a human player and can act against the recoil force to maintain stability.

Design and control of an inchworm-inspired soft robot with omega-arching locomotion

Abstract: This paper presents an inchworm inspired soft robot composed of the soft body, the front foot as well as the back foot. Compared to the traditional inchworm-type robot consisting of rigid components, the driven mode for the soft robot is more simple. The soft robot inspired by the inchworm has higher locomotion efficiency than the other bionic soft robot. The main idea of this paper is to imitate the “Ω” motion shape of biology inchworm based on a silicone square tube with strain-limiting layers. Besides, each foot of the robot made through 3D printing technology together with metal sheet can produce different friction coefficients to achieve the anchor-motion movement. Then, the robot realizes an inchworm-like locomotion under certain actuation patterns. Experimental results show that the proposed robot has excellent performance.