Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
4.3
2.3
Journals
Actuators
Special Issues
Intelligent and Advanced Control for Human-Centric Robotic Actuation and Interaction
share announcement

Intelligent and Advanced Control for Human-Centric Robotic Actuation and Interaction

A special issue of Actuators (ISSN 2076-0825). This special issue belongs to the section "Actuators for Robotics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 280

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Brahim Brahmi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
1. Electrical Engineering Department, College Ahuntsic, Montreal, QC H2M 1Y8, Canada
2. Department of Electrical Engineering, Center for Interdisciplinary Research Center for Intelligent Manufacturing & Robotics (IRC-IMR), King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia
Interests: nonlinear and adaptive control; bio-robotics; rehabilitation robots; industrial automation; IoT; fundamental motion control concepts for nonholonomic/underactuated vehicle systems; haptic systems; intelligent and autonomous control of unmanned systems; intelligent systems; machine learning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Actuators invites original contributions for a forthcoming Special Issue "Intelligent and Advanced Control for Human-Centric Robotic Actuation and Interaction". As robotic systems move from autonomous tools to collaborative partners, the role of control theory becomes increasingly vital in ensuring safe, adaptable, and high-performance operation in human-in-the-loop environments. This Special Issue invites contributions that explore advanced control strategies—ranging from adaptive and nonlinear methods to optimal and passivity-based approaches—for embodied, actuated systems in dynamic, interactive settings. We welcome both theoretical contributions and application-driven studies validated through experiments or deployment in human-facing systems. 

Topics include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Nonlinear/adaptive control in physical human–robot systems;
  • Disturbance observers, state estimation, and hybrid control;
  • Impedance/admittance frameworks for compliant interaction;
  • Optimal control with task-specific or user-specific constraints
  • Wearable actuators, exoskeletons, and co-manipulative platforms.

Dr. Brahim Brahmi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Actuators is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • human–robot interaction (HRI)
  • intelligent control
  • adaptive control
  • nonlinear control
  • impedance/admittance control
  • observer-based control

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

25 pages, 15912 KiB  
Article
Disturbance-Resilient Flatness-Based Control for End-Effector Rehabilitation Robotics
by Soraya Bououden, Brahim Brahmi, Naveed Iqbal, Raouf Fareh and Mohammad Habibur Rahman
Actuators 2025, 14(7), 341; https://doi.org/10.3390/act14070341 - 8 Jul 2025
Viewed by 188
Abstract
Robotic-assisted therapy is an increasingly vital approach for upper-limb rehabilitation, offering consistent, high-intensity training critical to neuroplastic recovery. However, current control strategies often lack robustness against uncertainties and external disturbances, limiting their efficacy in dynamic, real-world settings. Addressing this gap, this study proposes [...] Read more.
Robotic-assisted therapy is an increasingly vital approach for upper-limb rehabilitation, offering consistent, high-intensity training critical to neuroplastic recovery. However, current control strategies often lack robustness against uncertainties and external disturbances, limiting their efficacy in dynamic, real-world settings. Addressing this gap, this study proposes a novel control framework for the iTbot—a 2-DoF end-effector rehabilitation robot—by integrating differential flatness theory with a derivative-free Kalman filter (DFK). The objective is to achieve accurate and adaptive trajectory tracking in the presence of unmeasured dynamics and human–robot interaction forces. The control design reformulates the nonlinear joint-space dynamics into a 0-flat canonical form, enabling real-time computation of feedforward control laws based solely on flat outputs and their derivatives. Simultaneously, the DFK-based observer estimates external perturbations and unmeasured states without requiring derivative calculations, allowing for online disturbance compensation. Extensive simulations across nominal and disturbed conditions demonstrate that the proposed controller significantly outperforms conventional flatness-based control in tracking accuracy and robustness, as measured by reduced mean absolute error and standard deviation. Experimental validation under both simple and repetitive physiotherapy tasks confirms the system’s ability to maintain sub-millimeter Cartesian accuracy and sub-degree joint errors even amid dynamic perturbations. These results underscore the controller’s effectiveness in enabling compliant, safe, and disturbance-resilient rehabilitation, paving the way for broader deployment of robotic therapy in clinical and home-based environments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intelligent and Advanced Control for Human-Centric Robotic Actuation and Interaction)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-1
Back to TopTop