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Robotics, Volume 8, Issue 3

2019 September - 33 articles

Cover Story: Exoskeletons are an increasingly popular technology in industrial contexts. However, most of the available solutions involve high-cost hardware, standard actuation, and controllers showing safety and active assistance limitations. In the present work, an industrial exoskeleton with a high-payload ratio is proposed. A low-cost mechanical design solution (<10,000 Euro) is described, exploiting compliant actuation at the shoulder joint. A hierarchic model-based controller with embedded safety rules is also proposed. An inner gain scheduled-optimal controller is designed for trajectory tracking, while an outer safety-based fuzzy controller is designed to online assist the human based on his/her intention of moving. Simulations have been performed to validate the performance of the proposed device, showing promising results. The prototype is currently undergoing realization. View this paper.
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Articles (33)

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
7,622 Views
16 Pages

Virtualization of Robotic Hands Using Mobile Devices

  • Santiago T. Puente,
  • Lucía Más,
  • Fernando Torres and
  • and Francisco A. Candelas

16 September 2019

This article presents a multiplatform application for the tele-operation of a robot hand using virtualization in Unity 3D. This approach grants usability to users that need to control a robotic hand, allowing supervision in a collaborative way. This...

  • Article
  • Open Access
25 Citations
11,516 Views
19 Pages

Analysis of the Compliance Properties of an Industrial Robot with the Mozzi Axis Approach

  • Alberto Doria,
  • Silvio Cocuzza,
  • Nicola Comand,
  • Matteo Bottin and
  • Aldo Rossi

11 September 2019

In robotic processes, the compliance of the robot arm plays a very important role. In some conditions, for example, in robotic assembly, robot arm compliance can compensate for small position and orientation errors of the end-effector. In other proce...

  • Article
  • Open Access
11 Citations
9,343 Views
18 Pages

Model-Based Grasping of Unknown Objects from a Random Pile

  • Bruno Sauvet,
  • François Lévesque,
  • SeungJae Park,
  • Philippe Cardou and
  • Clément Gosselin

6 September 2019

Grasping an unknown object in a pile is no easy task for a robot—it is often difficult to distinguish different objects; objects occlude one another; object proximity limits the number of feasible grasps available; and so forth. In this paper,...

  • Article
  • Open Access
22 Citations
14,028 Views
18 Pages

Design and Implementation of a Quadruped Amphibious Robot Using Duck Feet

  • Saad Bin Abul Kashem,
  • Shariq Jawed,
  • Jubaer Ahmed and
  • Uvais Qidwai

5 September 2019

Roaming complexity in terrains and unexpected environments pose significant difficulties in robotic exploration of an area. In a broader sense, robots have to face two common tasks during exploration, namely, walking on the drylands and swimming thro...

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
6,601 Views
22 Pages

Trajectory Analysis for the MASAR: A New Modular and Single-Actuator Robot

  • Adrián Peidró,
  • Julio Gallego,
  • Luis Payá,
  • José María Marín and
  • Óscar Reinoso

5 September 2019

Single-actuator mobile robots offer the benefits of low energy consumption, low weight and size, and low cost, but their motion is typically only one-dimensional. By using auxiliary binary mechanisms that redirect and channel the driving force of the...

  • Article
  • Open Access
15 Citations
8,074 Views
17 Pages

An Architecture for the Integration of Robots and Sensors for the Care of the Elderly in an Ambient Assisted Living Environment

  • David Loza-Matovelle,
  • Alexandra Verdugo,
  • Eduardo Zalama and
  • Jaime Gómez-García-Bermejo

3 September 2019

In this paper, the development of an assistance system for the elderly that combines robots with a network of sensors and actuators is described. The architecture was developed with the aim of interaction. With this reason, the system incorporates pa...

  • Article
  • Open Access
33 Citations
15,873 Views
12 Pages

People Detection and Tracking Using LIDAR Sensors

  • Claudia Álvarez-Aparicio,
  • Ángel Manuel Guerrero-Higueras,
  • Francisco Javier Rodríguez-Lera,
  • Jonatan Ginés Clavero,
  • Francisco Martín Rico and
  • Vicente Matellán

31 August 2019

The tracking of people is an indispensable capacity in almost any robotic application. A relevant case is the @home robotic competitions, where the service robots have to demonstrate that they possess certain skills that allow them to interact with t...

  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
7,116 Views
13 Pages

20 August 2019

This paper aims to describe how additive manufacturing can be useful in enhancing a robotic course, allowing students to focus on all aspects of the multidisciplinary components of this subject. A three-year experience of the course of “robotic...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
8,323 Views
31 Pages

16 August 2019

In this paper, we experimentally evaluate the performance of a sensor concept for solving the direct kinematics problem of a general planar 3-RPR parallel mechanism by using solely the linear actuators’ orientations. At first, we review classic...

  • Technical Note
  • Open Access
8 Citations
7,541 Views
16 Pages

12 August 2019

Pick-and-place manipulators have become one of the principal components of almost all manufacturing plants. The process of sizing the number of manipulators required to efficiently carry out pick-and-place tasks depends on the complexities of such pl...

  • Review
  • Open Access
25 Citations
9,444 Views
16 Pages

Towards Functional Mobile Microrobotic Systems

  • Georges Adam,
  • Sagar Chowdhury,
  • Maria Guix,
  • Benjamin V. Johnson,
  • Chenghao Bi and
  • David Cappelleri

This paper presents our work over the last decade in developing functional microrobotic systems, which include wireless actuation of microrobots to traverse complex surfaces, addition of sensing capabilities, and independent actuation of swarms of mi...

  • Article
  • Open Access
6 Citations
7,037 Views
19 Pages

Optimization of a Kitting Line: A Case Study

  • Nicola Comand,
  • Riccardo Minto,
  • Giovanni Boschetti,
  • Maurizio Faccio and
  • Giulio Rosati

Assembly kitting lines typically deal with components that present different quantities in the final kit. Re-configurable feeders are not advisable for low quantity components since this solution leads to high inefficiency, due to the time required f...

  • Article
  • Open Access
14 Citations
10,079 Views
14 Pages

Pinch Grasp and Suction for Delicate Object Manipulations Using Modular Anthropomorphic Robotic Gripper with Soft Layer Enhancements

  • Godwin Ponraj Joseph Vedhagiri,
  • Avataram Venkatavaradan Prituja,
  • Changsheng Li,
  • Guoniu Zhu,
  • Nitish V. Thakor and
  • Hongliang Ren

This paper is an extension of our previous work about a modular anthropomorphic robotic hand with soft enhancements focusing on simultaneous pinch grasp and suction-based object manipulations. The base structure is a tendon-driven robotic hand compri...

  • Article
  • Open Access
17 Citations
11,341 Views
24 Pages

Industrial manipulators and parallel robots are often used for tasks, such as drilling or milling, that require three translational, but only two rotational degrees of freedom (“3T2R”). While kinematic models for specific mechanisms for t...

  • Article
  • Open Access
32 Citations
12,137 Views
21 Pages

Mechanical and Control Design of an Industrial Exoskeleton for Advanced Human Empowering in Heavy Parts Manipulation Tasks

  • Alessandro Mauri,
  • Jacopo Lettori,
  • Giovanni Fusi,
  • Davide Fausti,
  • Maurizio Mor,
  • Francesco Braghin,
  • Giovanni Legnani and
  • Loris Roveda

Exoskeleton robots are a rising technology in industrial contexts to assist humans in onerous applications. Mechanical and control design solutions are intensively investigated to achieve a high performance human-robot collaboration (e.g., transparen...

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
8,168 Views
9 Pages

This paper deals with the reconfiguration analysis of a 3-DOF (degrees-of-freedom) parallel manipulator (PM) which belongs to the cylindrical parallel mechanisms family. The PM is composed of a base and a moving platform shaped as equilateral triangl...

  • Article
  • Open Access
29 Citations
11,777 Views
21 Pages

The mobile robot kinematic model is a nonlinear affine system, which is constrained by velocity and acceleration limits. Therefore, the traditional control methods may not solve the tracking problem because of the physical constraint. In this paper,...

  • Article
  • Open Access
11 Citations
7,883 Views
25 Pages

In this paper, we investigate the problem of grasping previously unseen objects in unstructured environments which are cluttered with multiple objects. Object geometry, reachability, and force-closure analysis are considered to address this problem....

  • Article
  • Open Access
12 Citations
10,041 Views
23 Pages

This paper describes the development of a convolutional neural network for the control of a home monitoring robot (FumeBot). The robot is fitted with a Raspberry Pi for on board control and a Raspberry Pi camera is used as the data feed for the neura...

  • Article
  • Open Access
15 Citations
7,025 Views
15 Pages

Impermeable and Compliant: SIBS as a Promising Encapsulant for Ionically Electroactive Devices

  • Saeedeh Ebrahimi Takalloo,
  • Adelyne Fannir,
  • Giao T. M. Nguyen,
  • Cedric Plesse,
  • Frederic Vidal and
  • John D. W. Madden

Metals and glass are excellent for containing electrolytes and liquids in general, but their rigid mechanics limits their application for mechanically active ionic actuators or flexible/ stretchable electrochemical devices such as batteries and super...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
5,807 Views
25 Pages

A Sensor-Network-Supported Mobile-Agent-Search Strategy for Wilderness Rescue

  • Jason Chong Lee Shin,
  • Zendai Kashino,
  • Goldie Nejat and
  • Beno Benhabib

Mobile target search is a problem pertinent to a variety of applications, including wilderness search and rescue. This paper proposes a hybrid approach for target search utilizing a team of mobile agents supported by a network of static sensors. The...

  • Article
  • Open Access
163 Citations
14,794 Views
17 Pages

Fault Diagnosis for UAV Blades Using Artificial Neural Network

  • Gino Iannace,
  • Giuseppe Ciaburro and
  • Amelia Trematerra

In recent years, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used in several fields including, for example, archaeology, cargo transport, conservation, healthcare, filmmaking, hobbies and recreational use. UAVs are aircraft characterized by the absence...

  • Article
  • Open Access
12 Citations
6,447 Views
20 Pages

Rotational Workspace Expansion of a Planar CDPR with a Circular End-Effector Mechanism Allowing Passive Reconfiguration

  • Marco Alexander Carpio Alemán,
  • Roque Saltaren,
  • Alejandro Rodriguez,
  • Gerardo Portilla and
  • Juan Diego Placencia

Cable-Driven Parallel Robots (CDPR) operate over a large positional workspace and a relatively large orientation workspace. In the present work, the expansion of the orientation Wrench Feasible Workspace (WFW) in a planar four-cable passive reconfigu...

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
6,125 Views
18 Pages

This paper addresses a strategy learning problem in the RoboCupSoccer Small Size League (SSL). We propose a novel method based on action sequences to cluster an opponent’s strategies online. Our proposed method is composed of the following thre...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
75 Citations
15,843 Views
20 Pages

Several bio-inspired underwater robots have been demonstrated in the last few years that can horizontally swim using different smart actuators. However, very few works have been presented on robots which can swim vertically, have a payload and resemb...

  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
7,406 Views
15 Pages

In this paper, we describe the development of a robot that plays the “darumasan-ga- koronda” game with human players. It is a big challenge to develop a robot that can play with human players. We first observed the human–human game...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
6,005 Views
14 Pages

Press Start to Play: Classifying Multi-Robot Operators and Predicting Their Strategies through a Videogame

  • Juan Jesús Roldán,
  • Víctor Díaz-Maroto,
  • Javier Real,
  • Pablo R. Palafox,
  • João Valente,
  • Mario Garzón and
  • Antonio Barrientos

One of the active challenges in multi-robot missions is related to managing operator workload and situational awareness. Currently, the operators are trained to use interfaces, but in the near future this can be turned inside out: the interfaces will...

  • Review
  • Open Access
96 Citations
15,312 Views
35 Pages

A Survey of Behavioral Models for Social Robots

  • Olivia Nocentini,
  • Laura Fiorini,
  • Giorgia Acerbi,
  • Alessandra Sorrentino,
  • Gianmaria Mancioppi and
  • Filippo Cavallo

The cooperation between humans and robots is becoming increasingly important in our society. Consequently, there is a growing interest in the development of models that can enhance and enrich the interaction between humans and robots. A key challenge...

  • Article
  • Open Access
12 Citations
7,338 Views
22 Pages

Cooperative Optimization of UAVs Formation Visual Tracking

  • Nicola Lissandrini,
  • Giulia Michieletto,
  • Riccardo Antonello,
  • Marta Galvan,
  • Alberto Franco and
  • Angelo Cenedese

The use of unmanned vehicles to perform tiring, hazardous, repetitive tasks, is becoming a reality out of the academy laboratories, getting more and more interest for several application fields from the industrial, to the civil, to the military conte...

  • Article
  • Open Access
29 Citations
8,438 Views
26 Pages

Online Social Networks (OSNs), such as Facebook and Twitter, have become a very important part of many people’s daily lives. Unfortunately, the high popularity of these platforms makes them very attractive to spammers. Machine learning (ML) tec...

  • Article
  • Open Access
46 Citations
21,072 Views
18 Pages

Wire-driven continuum manipulators are gaining more attention due to their flexibility and dexterity features. In comparison with traditional manipulators, the continuum structure is compliant and safe for human tissue and is able to easily adapt to...

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
5,968 Views
21 Pages

This study developed a wearable hearing-assist system that can identify the direction of a sound source while using short-term interaural time differences (ITDs) of sound pressure and convey the sound source direction to a hearing-impaired person via...

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Robotics - ISSN 2218-6581