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Robotics, Volume 8, Issue 4

2019 December - 23 articles

Cover Story: When an industrial robot performs a redundant task, there are infinite configurations that can achieve the same result. The complexity increases if collisions along movements are considered. In the cover article, an algorithm to calculate the suboptimal movement between two positions is proposed. The underlying idea is to create a cloud of safe via points around the workpiece and, using the graph theory and Dijkstra algorithm, find the safe path between the two positions that locally minimizes movement time. With respect to existing approaches, our method generates the via points for the wrist center in the Cartesian space, providing two advantages: the decoupling of the inverse kinematic problem and the minimization of wrist joint rotations along the path. As a result, both computational time and robot motion time are reduced.View this paper.
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Articles (23)

  • Article
  • Open Access
20 Citations
8,256 Views
16 Pages

Accelerating Interactive Reinforcement Learning by Human Advice for an Assembly Task by a Cobot

  • Joris De Winter,
  • Albert De Beir,
  • Ilias El Makrini,
  • Greet Van de Perre,
  • Ann Nowé and
  • Bram Vanderborght

16 December 2019

The assembly industry is shifting more towards customizable products, or requiring assembly of small batches. This requires a lot of reprogramming, which is expensive because a specialized engineer is required. It would be an improvement if untrained...

  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
8,579 Views
22 Pages

12 December 2019

Landing safely is the key to successful exploration of the solar system; the mitigation of the connected effects of collision in mechanical systems relies on the conversion of kinetic energy into heat or potential energy. An effective landing-system...

  • Article
  • Open Access
34 Citations
9,533 Views
21 Pages

Design of Multiple Wearable Robotic Extra Fingers for Human Hand Augmentation

  • Monica Malvezzi,
  • Zubair Iqbal,
  • Maria Cristina Valigi,
  • Maria Pozzi,
  • Domenico Prattichizzo and
  • Gionata Salvietti

11 December 2019

Augmenting the human hand with robotic extra fingers is a cutting-edge research topic and has many potential applications, in particular as a compensatory and rehabilitation tool for patients with upper limb impairments. Devices composed of two extra...

  • Article
  • Open Access
27 Citations
8,019 Views
16 Pages

9 December 2019

Moving from a given position to another with an industrial robot can be a challenging problem when the task is redundant around the tool axis. In this case, there are infinite ways of choosing both the starting and the ending configurations, so that...

  • Review
  • Open Access
571 Citations
57,699 Views
25 Pages

Human–Robot Collaboration in Manufacturing Applications: A Review

  • Eloise Matheson,
  • Riccardo Minto,
  • Emanuele G. G. Zampieri,
  • Maurizio Faccio and
  • Giulio Rosati

6 December 2019

This paper provides an overview of collaborative robotics towards manufacturing applications. Over the last decade, the market has seen the introduction of a new category of robots—collaborative robots (or “cobots”)—designed t...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
6,713 Views
21 Pages

29 November 2019

In this paper, we investigate the accuracy and the computational efficiency of an IMU-based approach for solving the direct kinematics problem of parallel mechanisms with length-variable linear actuators under dynamic conditions. By avoiding to measu...

  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
11,955 Views
31 Pages

26 November 2019

With the increasing demand for robots to react and adapt to unforeseen events, it is essential that a robot preserves agility at all times. While manipulability is a common measure to quantify agility at a given joint configuration, an efficient dire...

  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
8,246 Views
21 Pages

18 November 2019

Many methods have been proposed for avoiding obstacles in robotic systems. However, a robotic system that moves without colliding with obstacles and people, while still being mentally safe to the persons nearby, has not yet been realized. In this pap...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
5,644 Views
15 Pages

Quantifying Age-Related Differences of Ankle Mechanical Properties Using a Robotic Device

  • Francesca Martelli,
  • Juri Taborri,
  • Zaccaria Del Prete,
  • Eduardo Palermo and
  • Stefano Rossi

13 November 2019

A deep analysis of ankle mechanical properties is a fundamental step in the design of an exoskeleton, especially if it is to be suitable for both adults and children. This study aims at assessing age-related differences of ankle properties using pedi...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
7,068 Views
15 Pages

“Hmm, Did You Hear What I Just Said?”: Development of a Re-Engagement System for Socially Interactive Robots

  • Hoang-Long Cao,
  • Paola Cecilia Torrico Moron,
  • Pablo G. Esteban,
  • Albert De Beir,
  • Elahe Bagheri,
  • Dirk Lefeber and
  • Bram Vanderborght

9 November 2019

Maintaining engagement is challenging in human–human interaction. When disengagements happen, people try to adapt their behavior with an expectation that engagement will be regained. In human–robot interaction, although socially interacti...

  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
6,659 Views
13 Pages

8 November 2019

Smart textiles are flexible materials with interactive capabilities such as sensing, actuation, and computing, and in recent years have garnered considerable interest. Shape-memory alloy (SMA) wire is well-suited for smart textiles due to its high st...

  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
9,148 Views
13 Pages

Estimating Weight of Unknown Objects Using Active Thermography

  • Tamas Aujeszky,
  • Georgios Korres,
  • Mohamad Eid and
  • Farshad Khorrami

24 October 2019

Successful manipulation of unknown objects requires an understanding of their physical properties. Infrared thermography has the potential to provide real-time, contactless material characterization for unknown objects. In this paper, we propose an a...

  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
7,225 Views
20 Pages

23 October 2019

This paper deals with the control of the sit-to-stand transfer of a biped robotic device (either an autonomous biped robot or a haptic assistive exoskeleton for postural rehabilitation). The control has been synthesized, instead of considering the ph...

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
6,614 Views
17 Pages

22 October 2019

The zero moment point ( Z M P ) and the linearized inverted pendulum model linking the Z M P to the center of gravity ( C O G ) have an important role in the control of the postural equilibrium (balance) of biped robots and lower-...

  • Article
  • Open Access
32 Citations
12,498 Views
13 Pages

Reliable Real-Time Ball Tracking for Robot Table Tennis

  • Sebastian Gomez-Gonzalez,
  • Yassine Nemmour,
  • Bernhard Schölkopf and
  • Jan Peters

22 October 2019

Robot table tennis systems require a vision system that can track the ball position with low latency and high sampling rate. Altering the ball to simplify the tracking using, for instance, infrared coating changes the physics of the ball trajectory....

  • Review
  • Open Access
82 Citations
23,264 Views
14 Pages

Questionnaires to Measure Acceptability of Social Robots: A Critical Review

  • Christian U. Krägeloh,
  • Jaishankar Bharatharaj,
  • Senthil Kumar Sasthan Kutty,
  • Praveen Regunathan Nirmala and
  • Loulin Huang

21 October 2019

Understanding user perceptions is particularly important in developing social robots, which tend to have a high degree of interaction with humans. However, psychometric measures of robot acceptability have only recently started to become available. T...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
32 Citations
11,653 Views
10 Pages

15 October 2019

One major challenge for microrobots is to penetrate and effectively move through viscoelastic biological tissues. Most existing microrobots can only propel in viscous liquids. Recent advances demonstrate that sub-micron robots can actively penetrate...

  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
10,419 Views
20 Pages

12 October 2019

The manipulation of unknown objects is a problem of special interest in robotics since it is not always possible to have exact models of the objects with which the robot interacts. This paper presents a simple strategy to manipulate unknown objects u...

  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
8,358 Views
15 Pages

Design and Preliminary Testing of a Continuum Assistive Robotic Manipulator

  • Ryan Coulson,
  • Megan Robinson,
  • Max Kirkpatrick and
  • Devin R. Berg

26 September 2019

Background: The application of continuum manipulators as assistive robots is discussed and tested through the use of Bendy ARM, a simple manually teleoperated tendon driven continuum manipulator prototype. Methods: Two rounds of user testing were per...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
21 Citations
10,208 Views
20 Pages

Tactile-Driven Grasp Stability and Slip Prediction

  • Brayan S. Zapata-Impata,
  • Pablo Gil and
  • Fernando Torres

26 September 2019

One of the challenges in robotic grasping tasks is the problem of detecting whether a grip is stable or not. The lack of stability during a manipulation operation usually causes the slippage of the grasped object due to poor contact forces. Frequentl...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
6,092 Views
29 Pages

22 September 2019

The optimal tracking problem is addressed in the robotics literature by using a variety of robust and adaptive control approaches. However, these schemes are associated with implementation limitations such as applicability in uncertain dynamical envi...

  • Tutorial
  • Open Access
14 Citations
15,314 Views
33 Pages

22 September 2019

Field robotics is a very important sub-field of robotic systems, focusing on systems which need to navigate in open, unpredictable terrain and perform non-repetitive missions while monitoring and reacting to their surroundings. General testing and va...

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Robotics - ISSN 2218-6581