Mechanism Design for Robotics

MEDER 2018, the IFToMM International Symposium on Mechanism Design for Robotics, was the fourth event of a series that was started in 2010 as a specific conference activity on mechanisms for robots. The first event was held at Universidad Panamericana de Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico, in September 2010; the second was held in 2012 at Beihang University in Beijing, China; the third one was held in 2012at Aalborg University in Denmark; and the fourth one was organized at Udine University in Italy.

The aim of the MEDER Symposium is to bring researchers, industry professionals, and students together from a broad ranges of disciplines dealing with mechanisms for robots, in an intimate, collegial, and stimulating environment. Again, in the 2018 MEDER event, we have received significant attention regarding this initiative, as can be seen by the fact that the Proceedings contain contributions by authors from all around the world.

The Proceedings of MEDER 2018 Symposium have been published within the Springer book series on MMS, and the book contains 52 papers that have been selected after review for oral presentation. These papers cover several aspects of the wide field of robotics dealing with mechanism aspects in theory, design, numerical evaluations, and applications.

This Special Issue in Robotics (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/robotics/special_issues/MDR) has been obtained as a result of a second review process and selection, but all the papers that have been accepted for MEDER 2018 are of very good quality with interesting contents that are suitable for journal publication, and the selection process has been difficult.

The papers in this Special Issue are focused on the design of novel mechanisms for robots, and on the development of new methodologies for the modeling and control of robotic devices. In particular, a couple of papers deal with walking robots, namely, one presents a novel humanoid robot with parallel architectures [1] and the other one is focused on a hexapod robot [2]. Several papers are focused on teleoperation and HRI (human–robot interactions) to deal with the design of a safe teleoperated system for Doppler sonography [3] and of a safety mechanism for cobot joints [4], the development of techniques for hand guidance of a mobile robot [5], and the use of artificial muscles in haptic interfaces [6]. Other papers address problems regarding the design of specific actuators for robots, such as underactuated fingers [7], compliant rotary actuators [8], and robotic wrists [9]. There are also three papers on special robotic systems for a robot for artistic painting [10], a cylindrical rolling robot [11], and a cable-driven robot [12]. The last paper of this Special Issue presents a methodology for the design of optimal robotic trajectories [13].

The members of the International Scientific Committee for MEDER Symposium are gratefully acknowledged for helping us to achieve the success of MEDER 2018 and this Special Issue:

• Marco Ceccarelli (Univ. of Cassino, Italy, Chair)
• Ding Xilun (Beihang Univ., China)
• Grigore Gogu (SIGMA Clermont, France)
• Mario Acevedo (Univ. Panamericana, Mexico)
• Shaoping Bai (Aalborg Univ., Denmark)
• Yukio Takeda (Tokyo Inst Tech., Japan)
• Alba Perez (Idaho State Univ., USA)
• Yan Jin (Belfast Univ., UK)
• Erwin Lovasz (Politehnica Univ. Timisoara, Romania)
• Said Zeghloul (Poitiers Univ., France)
• Victor Petuya (Univ. of Basque Country, Spain).

We thank the authors, who have contributed very interesting papers on several subjects, covering many fields of “Mechanism Design for Robotics”, and for their cooperation in revising papers on time in agreement with the reviewers’ comments. We are grateful to the reviewers for the time and effort they spent in evaluating the papers to a very tight schedule, which permitted the publication of this Special Issue.

We thank the Udine University in Udine, Italy, for having hosted the MEDER 2018 event with a very efficient local organising committee. We would like to thank the sponsorship of IFToMM (International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science), IFToMM Italy, the IFToMM Technical Committees of Linkages and Mechanical Controls, and Robotics and Mechatronics, which have supported the conference event, in which more than 15 countries participated.

We would like to thank the publisher and editorial staff of the Robotics for accepting and helping with the publication of this Special Issue, a process that began in 2016.

We are grateful to our families, since without their patience and comprehension it would not have been possible for us to organise MEDER 2018, IFToMM International Symposium on Mechanism Design for Robotics and this Special Issue.