Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
3.2
2.6
Journals
Actuators
Special Issues
Intelligent Humanoid Mobile Robots
share announcement

Intelligent Humanoid Mobile Robots

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 June 2022) | Viewed by 8673

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Jorge Muñoz

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
RoboticsLab, University Carlos III of Madrid, Avenida Universidad 30, 28911 Madrid, Spain
Interests: robust control; adaptive control; fractional-order control; robotics; humanoid robots; soft robots
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Concepción A. Monje

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Carlos III University of Madrid, Calle Madrid, 126, 28903 Getafe, Madrid, Spain
Interests: robust control; adaptive control; fractional-order control; robotics; humanoid robots; soft robots; AUVs; path planning

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the last decades, a growing interest in humanoid robotics has been observed. Not surprisingly, a complete humanoid robot would be the holy grail of service robotics. A fully capable humanoid robot is presently almost as desirable as unreachable. Although impressive advances have been made, there is still a long way to go. There are still many problems that require robust solutions in order to develop such a robot:

  • Human–robot interaction;
  • Perception and sensor integration;
  • Decision making and artificial intelligence;
  • Locomotion (legged);
  • Navigation (legged and wheeled);
  • High- and low-level humanoid control;
  • Humanoid applications of soft robotics;
  • Low-cost humanoid manufacturing (including 3d printing).

The aim of this Special Issue is to propose potential solutions to these problems and therefore to contribute to the final purpose of building reliable and affordable humanoid robots.

Prof. Dr. Jorge Muñoz
Prof. Dr. Concepción A. Monje
Guest Editors

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

  • humanoid robots
  • artificial intelligence
  • control engineering
  • low-cost robotics
  • legged locomotion
  • sensor fusion
  • 3D printing

Published Papers (3 papers)

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

Research

18 pages, 10715 KiB  
Article
Binary Controller Based on the Electrical Activity Related to Head Yaw Rotation
by Enrico Zero, Chiara Bersani and Roberto Sacile
Actuators 2022, 11(6), 161; https://doi.org/10.3390/act11060161 - 15 Jun 2022
Viewed by 1592
Abstract
A human machine interface (HMI) is presented to switch on/off lights according to the head left/right yaw rotation. The HMI consists of a cap, which can acquire the brain’s electrical activity (i.e., an electroencephalogram, EEG) sampled at 500 Hz on 8 channels with [...] Read more.
A human machine interface (HMI) is presented to switch on/off lights according to the head left/right yaw rotation. The HMI consists of a cap, which can acquire the brain’s electrical activity (i.e., an electroencephalogram, EEG) sampled at 500 Hz on 8 channels with electrodes that are positioned according to the standard 10–20 system. In addition, the HMI includes a controller based on an input–output function that can compute the head position (defined as left, right, and forward position with respect to yaw angle) considering short intervals (10 samples) of the signals coming from three electrodes positioned in O1, O2, and Cz. An artificial neural network (ANN) training based on a Levenberg–Marquardt backpropagation algorithm was used to identify the input–output function. The HMI controller was tested on 22 participants. The proposed classifier achieved an average accuracy of 88% with the best value of 96.85%. After calibration for each specific subject, the HMI was used as a binary controller to verify its ability to switch on/off lamps according to head turning movement. The correct prediction of the head movements was greater than 75% in 90% of the participants when performing the test with open eyes. If the subjects carried out the experiments with closed eyes, the prediction accuracy reached 75% of correctness in 11 participants out of 22. One participant controlled the light system in both experiments, open and closed eyes, with 100% success. The control results achieved in this work can be considered as an important milestone towards humanoid neck systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intelligent Humanoid Mobile Robots)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

20 pages, 960 KiB  
Article
Active Exploration for Obstacle Detection on a Mobile Humanoid Robot
by Luca Nobile, Marco Randazzo, Michele Colledanchise, Luca Monorchio, Wilson Villa, Francesco Puja and Lorenzo Natale
Actuators 2021, 10(9), 205; https://doi.org/10.3390/act10090205 - 25 Aug 2021
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2928
Abstract
Conventional approaches to robot navigation in unstructured environments rely on information acquired from the LiDAR mounted on the robot base to detect and avoid obstacles. This approach fails to detect obstacles that are too small, or that are invisible because they are outside [...] Read more.
Conventional approaches to robot navigation in unstructured environments rely on information acquired from the LiDAR mounted on the robot base to detect and avoid obstacles. This approach fails to detect obstacles that are too small, or that are invisible because they are outside the LiDAR’s field of view. A possible strategy is to integrate information from other sensors. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using depth information from a movable RGB-D camera mounted on the head of the robot, and investigate, in particular, active control strategies to effectively scan the environment. Existing works combine RGBD-D and 2D LiDAR data passively by fusing the current point-cloud from the RGB-D camera with the occupancy grid computed from the 2D LiDAR data, while the robot follows a given path. In contrast, we propose an optimization strategy that actively changes the position of the robot’s head, where the camera is mounted, at each point of the given navigation path; thus, we can fully exploit the RGB-D camera to detect, and hence avoid, obstacles undetected by the 2D LiDAR, such as overhanging obstacles or obstacles in blind spots. We validate our approach in both simulation environments to gather statistically significant data and real environments to show the applicability of our method to real robots. The platform used is the humanoid robot R1. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intelligent Humanoid Mobile Robots)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 6073 KiB  
Article
Design and Preliminary Testing of a Magnetic Spring as an Energy-Storing System for Reduced Power Consumption of a Humanoid Arm
by Jhon F. Rodríguez-León, Ilse Cervantes, Eduardo Castillo-Castañeda, Giuseppe Carbone and Daniele Cafolla
Actuators 2021, 10(6), 136; https://doi.org/10.3390/act10060136 - 21 Jun 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2538
Abstract
The increasing use of robots in the industry, the growing energy prices, and higher environmental awareness have driven research to find new solutions for reducing energy consumption. In additional, in most robotic tasks, energy is used to overcome the forces of gravity, but [...] Read more.
The increasing use of robots in the industry, the growing energy prices, and higher environmental awareness have driven research to find new solutions for reducing energy consumption. In additional, in most robotic tasks, energy is used to overcome the forces of gravity, but in a few industrial applications, the force of gravity is used as a source of energy. For this reason, the use of magnetic springs with actuators may reduce the energy consumption of robots performing trajectories due their high-hardness magnetic properties of energy storage. Accordingly, this paper proposes a magnetic spring configuration as an energy-storing system for a two DoF humanoid arm. Thus, an integration of the magnetic spring system in the robot is described. A control strategy is proposed to enable autonomous use. In this paper, the proposed device is modeled and analyzed with simulations as: mechanical energy consumption and kinetic energy rotational and multibody dynamics. Furthermore, a prototype was manufactured and validated experimentally. A preliminary test to check the interaction between the magnetic spring system with the mechanism and the trajectory performance was carried out. Finally, an energy consumption comparison with and without the magnetic spring is also presented. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Intelligent Humanoid Mobile Robots)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-3
Back to TopTop