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Search Results (613)

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Keywords = kinematic mapping

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26 pages, 2202 KB  
Article
A Multi-Seed Analysis of Adversarial Vulnerability in BiLSTM Continuous Authentication
by Ahmed Mahfouz, Mohammed Abdulla Salim Al Husaini, Alaa A. K. Ismaeel and Yousuf Al Husaini
Future Internet 2026, 18(6), 332; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi18060332 (registering DOI) - 22 Jun 2026
Viewed by 136
Abstract
A single user-invariant tensor, kinematically impossible for any human finger to produce, bypasses bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) continuous-authentication defenders with numerically identical structure across four independently trained generators. We arrive at this finding by training generative adversarial networks against BiLSTM defenders on [...] Read more.
A single user-invariant tensor, kinematically impossible for any human finger to produce, bypasses bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) continuous-authentication defenders with numerically identical structure across four independently trained generators. We arrive at this finding by training generative adversarial networks against BiLSTM defenders on 51 users across three independent random seeds, with the data partition held fixed, to test the prevailing assumption that successful generative attacks must reproduce the victim’s kinematic behavior. Aggregate attack success rate varies from 31.4% to 45.1% across seeds, a 13.7 percentage-point spread arising purely from optimization stochasticity, demonstrating how unreliable single-seed reporting is as an estimator of the true attack surface. A four-group descriptive stratification shows that 8% of users are attacked across all three seeds, 31% are consistently safe, and 61% exhibit seed-dependent outcomes. Classifier accuracy on zero-effort impostors does not predict adversarial vulnerability (Spearman ρ=0.058, permutation p=0.688), whereas intra-user behavioral variance does (ρ=+0.351, permutation p=0.012, Bonferroni-corrected). The mechanism is not behavioral emulation but convergence to an Adversarial Skeleton Key, a tensor located in an unregularized region of the BiLSTM’s decision surface that the network reliably maps to acceptance, despite lying many standard deviations outside any genuine human distribution. The mimicry-centric evaluation paradigm underestimates the real threat surface. Input-space plausibility must be treated as a defensive layer rather than a preprocessing concern. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Cybersecurity)
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31 pages, 11223 KB  
Article
An Improved A*-Based Path-Planning Framework for Facility Agricultural Robots
by Ziqiang Yang, Chunyan Zhang, Tao Yu and Zhen Xu
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(12), 6138; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16126138 - 17 Jun 2026
Viewed by 108
Abstract
Facility agricultural robots operating in greenhouse environments often encounter narrow passages, dense obstacle distributions, and frequent path-direction changes, which increase the difficulty of achieving efficient and smooth autonomous navigation. Conventional A* algorithms usually suffer from redundant node expansion, dense turning-point distributions, and insufficient [...] Read more.
Facility agricultural robots operating in greenhouse environments often encounter narrow passages, dense obstacle distributions, and frequent path-direction changes, which increase the difficulty of achieving efficient and smooth autonomous navigation. Conventional A* algorithms usually suffer from redundant node expansion, dense turning-point distributions, and insufficient path continuity under such constrained conditions. To address these issues, this study proposes an improved A*-based path-planning framework that integrates adaptive heuristic weighting, dynamic corner correction, and Bézier-curve-based path smoothing. Rather than introducing an entirely new planning paradigm, the proposed method coordinates several existing optimization strategies within a unified framework to improve search efficiency, path regularity, and path continuity for facility agricultural scenarios. The adaptive heuristic weighting strategy dynamically adjusts the contribution of the heuristic term according to the relative distance between the current node and the target node, thereby improving global search guidance while reducing unnecessary exploration. Dynamic corner correction is introduced to suppress zigzag path structures and reduce redundant turning nodes in obstacle-dense regions, while Bézier-curve-based smoothing is employed to improve path continuity and compatibility with the kinematic characteristics of agricultural mobile robots. Simulation experiments were conducted on grid maps and greenhouse-like environments with different obstacle distributions, and comparative evaluations were performed against Dijkstra, RRT, and conventional A* algorithms. Under representative simulation scenarios, the proposed framework reduced the number of turning points by up to 53.7% and decreased computation time by approximately 19.4% compared with the conventional A* algorithm, based on the average results of repeated trials under identical conditions. In addition, physical platform experiments on a ROS2-based agricultural robot demonstrated that the planned trajectories maintained relatively stable navigation performance and smoother directional transitions in constrained greenhouse-like environments. The results indicate that the proposed framework achieves a more balanced trade-off between computational efficiency, path compactness, and path smoothness than the benchmark methods considered in this study. Nevertheless, the current validation remains limited to structured or semi-structured greenhouse environments under static obstacle conditions. Future work will focus on improving adaptability to dynamic agricultural scenarios and integrating the framework with real-time perception and motion-control systems for practical greenhouse deployment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Robotics and AI: Planning, Control, and Applications)
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16 pages, 283 KB  
Review
Motion Analysis Technologies for ACL Injury Prevention: From Laboratory Assessment to Field-Based Clinical Screening
by Abdulmajeed Alfayyadh
J. Clin. Med. 2026, 15(12), 4686; https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm15124686 - 17 Jun 2026
Viewed by 217
Abstract
Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries remain a leading cause of morbidity in athletic populations, with 70–80% occurring through non-contact mechanisms driven by biomechanical risk factors including knee valgus (>10°), low knee flexion (<30°), tibial internal rotation (>20°), and loading asymmetry (>15°), yet implementation [...] Read more.
Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries remain a leading cause of morbidity in athletic populations, with 70–80% occurring through non-contact mechanisms driven by biomechanical risk factors including knee valgus (>10°), low knee flexion (<30°), tibial internal rotation (>20°), and loading asymmetry (>15°), yet implementation of evidence-based neuromuscular training (which reduces injury risk by 50–70%) remains limited due to barriers in identifying at-risk individuals through accessible field-based screening. This narrative review synthesizes motion analysis technologies spanning laboratory-based optical systems (marker-based), wearable inertial measurement units (IMUs), computer vision and marker-less pose estimation, force plate and pressure-sensitive insole systems, and integrated drone-based field assessment platforms to address this critical gap. We present a three-tier clinical screening framework that progresses from basic anthropometric and single-plane video analysis to multi-modal biomechanical assessment using real-time kinematic feedback. As an illustrative example of emerging field-deployable technology, an integrated drone-based motion capture and smart insole system combining 4K video capture, AI-driven 3D motion reconstruction, and plantar pressure mapping is described to demonstrate how laboratory-quality biomechanical assessment can be achieved in ecologically valid field settings. This evidence-based review addresses current gaps between laboratory research and practical field deployment, with emphasis on cost-effectiveness, accessibility, and clinical utility for ACL injury prevention in diverse sporting environments. Full article
31 pages, 42043 KB  
Article
Phase Segmentation and Phase-Specific Kinematic Feature Extraction of Hurdle Clearance Based on Monocular Video and Markerless Pose Estimation
by Yuxin Guo, Shaoze Zheng, Chen Liu and Huashuai Li
Sensors 2026, 26(12), 3822; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26123822 - 16 Jun 2026
Viewed by 318
Abstract
Hurdle technique analysis requires accurate identification of key phases and kinematic features, but conventional biomechanical methods are often costly, equipment-dependent, and difficult to apply in front-line training. This study developed a low-cost monocular-video-based framework for rapid hurdle clearance analysis in practical training settings. [...] Read more.
Hurdle technique analysis requires accurate identification of key phases and kinematic features, but conventional biomechanical methods are often costly, equipment-dependent, and difficult to apply in front-line training. This study developed a low-cost monocular-video-based framework for rapid hurdle clearance analysis in practical training settings. Thirty-seven physical education college students with different hurdling skill levels were recruited as participants, and side-view videos of their hurdle clearance were recorded. The proposed pipeline combined YOLO26 hurdle detection, RTMPose markerless pose estimation, rule-based key-event detection, phase segmentation, and phase-specific kinematic feature extraction. The results showed that the hurdle detection model achieved high accuracy, with bounding-box mAP@0.5 of 0.992 and mask mAP@0.5 of 0.971. Pose estimation showed good agreement with manual annotations, with an overall RMSE of 8.25 px and PCK of 97.64%. The rule-based phase segmentation method achieved an overall event localization MAE of 0.74 frames and RMSE of 1.55 frames, outperforming LSTM and TCN temporal baselines. Core distance and most angle variables also showed high agreement with manually recalculated values. These findings indicate that monocular video and markerless pose estimation can provide an accurate, low-cost, and practical tool for hurdle phase segmentation and kinematic assessment in routine training contexts. Full article
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33 pages, 489 KB  
Review
Geometry of Quantum Information Beyond Complex Numbers: A Review from Clifford Algebras, Division Algebras and Hopf Fibrations
by Johan H. Rúa Muñoz and Santiago Pineda Montoya
Symmetry 2026, 18(6), 1024; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym18061024 - 14 Jun 2026
Viewed by 181
Abstract
We develop a comparative synthesis of quantum-information geometry beyond complex numbers, with emphasis on what different algebraic frameworks contribute to information-processing structure rather than on their formal novelty alone. The organizing idea is a layer-by-layer test of the standard complex Hilbert-space formalism: each [...] Read more.
We develop a comparative synthesis of quantum-information geometry beyond complex numbers, with emphasis on what different algebraic frameworks contribute to information-processing structure rather than on their formal novelty alone. The organizing idea is a layer-by-layer test of the standard complex Hilbert-space formalism: each non-complex or deformed framework modifies the scalar field, phase group, projective state space, Born-probability semantics, composition rule, measurement geometry, symmetry algebra or representation category. The central thesis is that such frameworks are physically meaningful when they identify which assumptions make complex quantum mechanics operationally stable: positive probabilities, associative multipartite composition, reversible dynamics, experimentally testable phases, locality constraints, informationally complete measurements, error bases and clear operational semantics. Real quantum theory probes the necessity of complex phases and local tomography; quaternionic quantum mechanics probes non-Abelian phase while retaining associativity and admitting complex embeddings; octonionic proposals probe the boundary where exceptional geometry survives but generic circuit composition is obstructed by non-associativity; Jordan algebras test ordered probabilistic state spaces; Clifford algebras and Bott periodicity provide the spinorial and topological grammar connecting gates, Hopf maps and periodic dimensions; and quantum-group or q-deformed constructions probe coproducts, braiding and representation categories rather than scalar amplitudes. We distinguish three roles that are often conflated: genuine hypercomplex kinematics, Hopf-fibration coordinates for ordinary complex multipartite entanglement, and deformed algebraic or categorical structures. The resulting map separates established equivalence and experimental-constraint results from useful representation tools and speculative programs, while identifying concrete open problems for non-complex quantum information. Full article
34 pages, 4240 KB  
Article
A Multimodal Data Fusion Algorithm for Urban Low-Altitude UAV Perception
by Bowen Xu, Peinan He, Xu Wang, Yixiao Zhang and Yuanjie Zhao
Drones 2026, 10(6), 457; https://doi.org/10.3390/drones10060457 - 11 Jun 2026
Viewed by 207
Abstract
Accurate Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) position estimation is the cornerstone of urban low-altitude safety management systems. Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) and Remote Identification (Remote ID) are widely used surveillance technologies with complementary characteristics. TDOA provides high-rate updates but suffers from geometry-induced horizontal–vertical [...] Read more.
Accurate Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) position estimation is the cornerstone of urban low-altitude safety management systems. Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) and Remote Identification (Remote ID) are widely used surveillance technologies with complementary characteristics. TDOA provides high-rate updates but suffers from geometry-induced horizontal–vertical anisotropy and multipath effects, while Remote ID supplies absolute state information yet struggles with intermittent sampling and packet loss. Existing fusion schemes typically address these issues in isolation: sequential filtering manages asynchrony but assumes Gaussian noise, robust estimators suppress outliers at the cost of discarding valid data, and coupled-filter architectures allow vertical anomalies to contaminate horizontal estimates through the Kalman gain cross-coupling. No prior framework jointly handles structural TDOA altitude jumps, stochastic Remote ID timing jitter, and the geometric anisotropy between estimation subspaces within a single coherent pipeline. To bridge this gap, we propose a Hybrid Conditional Kalman Filter (HCKF) framework comprising three integrated modules. First, a kinematics-based temporal alignment module maps asynchronous measurements onto a uniform timeline and predicts missing samples, resolving cross-modal time mismatches. Second, a measurement quality evaluation mechanism detects TDOA altitude steps via robust two-layer stratification and scores Remote ID timing irregularity through a confidence mapping, converting these anomalies into dynamic covariance adjustments and weight caps without discarding observations. Third, a Subspace-Decoupled Fusion strategy exploits the physical insight that TDOA horizontal precision derives from hyperbolic intersection geometry, whereas its vertical estimates suffer from weak observability due to near-coplanar ground-station deployment. By applying entropy-guided weighting in the horizontal plane and a conditional Remote ID-dominant rule in the vertical axis, this design prevents cross-dimensional error propagation. The framework was validated using three real-world flight missions at distinct altitudes (255 m, 345 m, and 440 m) totaling 13.51 km of flight distance, with RTK serving as ground truth. HCKF reduces the Root Mean Square Error by over 40% relative to single-source baselines (95% bootstrap confidence interval: [35.2%, 48.7%]), and paired Wilcoxon signed-rank tests confirm statistically significant improvement (p<0.01) over standard EKF, Covariance Intersection, and Iterative CI across all three tracks. Full article
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29 pages, 26501 KB  
Article
High-Precision Calibration of Dual 6-DOF Series-Parallel Robot Actuators for Precision Manufacturing Systems via a Hierarchical Decoupling Multi-Modal Fusion Algorithm
by Litong Zhang, Haonan Dai, Mingyang Liu and Lizhong Sun
Actuators 2026, 15(6), 329; https://doi.org/10.3390/act15060329 - 9 Jun 2026
Viewed by 206
Abstract
Dual 6 degrees of freedom (6-DOF) series-parallel cooperative robot actuators are core execution components in modern intelligent manufacturing systems, which are widely used in high-end manufacturing scenarios such as aerospace precision assembly, laser precision machining, and core component assembly of new energy vehicles. [...] Read more.
Dual 6 degrees of freedom (6-DOF) series-parallel cooperative robot actuators are core execution components in modern intelligent manufacturing systems, which are widely used in high-end manufacturing scenarios such as aerospace precision assembly, laser precision machining, and core component assembly of new energy vehicles. However, in actual manufacturing processes, the pose deviation between theoretical model prediction and actual motion execution of the actuator, caused by kinematic model mismatch, unquantified core parameters, incomplete error processing chain, and complex on-site environmental interference, severely restricts the assembly accuracy, product qualification rate and production efficiency of the manufacturing system. To address these critical pain points of robot actuators in precision manufacturing systems, this paper proposes a four-layer hierarchical decoupling multi-modal fusion calibration algorithm for high-precision pose control of dual series-parallel robot actuators. The algorithm integrates singular value decomposition (SVD) for cross-structure coordinate alignment of heterogeneous actuators, chaotic mapping-enhanced particle swarm optimization (PSO) for nonlinear error suppression of the actuator system, attention-enhanced deep residual network (DRN) for unmodeled residual learning of the actuator, and Kalman filter (KF) for dynamic noise reduction in the manufacturing process. Meanwhile, a full-chain error transfer model of the actuator system in the manufacturing process is constructed, and the core parameters of the algorithm are quantified via dimensional sensitivity analysis and orthogonal experiments. Experimental results show that the static position error of the actuator system after calibration reaches 1.4 ± 0.08 mm, and the static pose error reaches 0.0059 ± 0.0003 rad in the laboratory environment; in the engineering application of laser precision machining in an actual manufacturing line, the position error and pose error only increase by 8.6% and 6.8% respectively, maintaining high stability in industrial manufacturing scenarios. Compared with mainstream calibration methods, the proposed algorithm reduces the position error and pose error of the actuator by up to 55.7% and 17.9% respectively, with lower computational complexity and higher engineering reproducibility. This work constructs an end-to-end error suppression chain with quantitative parameter criteria for the series-parallel actuator system in manufacturing systems, which provides a reliable high-precision calibration solution for industrial dual-robot cooperative manufacturing and has important guiding significance for improving the motion accuracy and operation stability of actuators in precision manufacturing systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Actuators for Manufacturing Systems)
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27 pages, 7550 KB  
Article
A Hybrid Inverse Kinematics Framework for Biomimetic Redundancy Resolution in 7-DoF Humanoid Arms
by Yapeng Shi, Zhen Chen, Ivan Mokiets, Songhao Piao, Teng Zhang and Lianzhao Zhang
Biomimetics 2026, 11(6), 408; https://doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics11060408 - 9 Jun 2026
Viewed by 222
Abstract
Resolving the kinematic redundancy of 7-DoF humanoid arms to generate natural, human-like motions remains a fundamental challenge in biomimetic robotics. This paper presents a hybrid inverse kinematics (IK) framework that learns a pose-dependent redundancy parameter and integrates it into a differential IK solver. [...] Read more.
Resolving the kinematic redundancy of 7-DoF humanoid arms to generate natural, human-like motions remains a fundamental challenge in biomimetic robotics. This paper presents a hybrid inverse kinematics (IK) framework that learns a pose-dependent redundancy parameter and integrates it into a differential IK solver. Specifically, we employ the stereographic Shoulder–Elbow–Wrist (SEW) angle as a well-conditioned geometric parameterization. This formulation transforms the algorithmic singularity into a unidirectional half-line, which can be oriented outside the typical reachable workspace. To specify the optimal configuration within the self-motion manifold, a motion dataset was collected by teleoperating a humanoid arm via an anthropomorphic wearable exoskeleton. This approach translates operator-specific postural preferences into the robot’s joint space. A lightweight neural network was then trained to learn the mapping from end-effector poses to these operator-specific SEW angles. By incorporating the predicted SEW angle as a dynamic secondary objective in the null space of the primary tracking task, the proposed framework enables natural redundancy resolution while preserving end-effector tracking accuracy. Both simulations and real-robot experiments were conducted to validate the approach. Results show that, compared to the average performance of static fixed-parameter strategies, the proposed method improves the Joint Configuration Quality Index (CQI) by 22.5% and reduces energy costs by 11.3%. Moreover, the sub-millisecond inference latency (0.44 ms) facilitates seamless integration into real-time control pipelines. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biologically Inspired Design and Control of Robots: Third Edition)
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17 pages, 12478 KB  
Article
Real-Time Road Distress Detection Deployment on Jetson TX2 Using Layer-Adaptive Magnitude Pruning and Channel-Wise Knowledge Distillation
by Hua Xu, Ziyi Yang and Hui Wang
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(12), 5766; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16125766 - 8 Jun 2026
Viewed by 136
Abstract
To enable the deployment of road distress detection models on resource-constrained embedded platforms, this paper presents a compression case study based on the LRDD-YOLOv8n detector designed for real-time 1080p video input. Layer-adaptive magnitude-based pruning (LAMP) was integrated with channel-wise knowledge distillation. First, LAMP [...] Read more.
To enable the deployment of road distress detection models on resource-constrained embedded platforms, this paper presents a compression case study based on the LRDD-YOLOv8n detector designed for real-time 1080p video input. Layer-adaptive magnitude-based pruning (LAMP) was integrated with channel-wise knowledge distillation. First, LAMP performs structured pruning adaptive global sparsity allocation to reduce parameters and FLOPs. Then, a larger teacher model (LRDD-YOLOv8s) with high structural similarity guides the pruned student to recover feature representations. Compared to the baseline LRDD-YOLOv8n (64.4% mAP@0.5, 2.02 M parameters, 5.9G FLOPs, and 55.5 ms GPU inference time on Jetson TX2), our compressed model under a 1/1.4 target compression ratio achieves a mAP@0.5 of 65.1% (an slight accuracy increment of 0.7%), while reducing parameters by 36.1% (to 1.29 M) and FLOPs by 30.5% (to 4.1 G). Deployed on the BOXER-8120AI edge platform (Jetson TX2), the optimized model achieves an average inference time of 48.3 ms per frame (a 13.0% latency reduction compared to the baseline model). In addition, a 20 FPS detection rate was sustained under the 30 FPS maximum hardware acquisition limit of the industrial camera stream. Kinematic and geometric analysis validates that this processing rate utilizes 66.7% of all physically available frames and establishes a 95.4% consecutive frame-to-frame spatial overlap at typical inspection vehicle speeds (40–60 km/h). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advance in Road and Pavement Engineering)
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19 pages, 2242 KB  
Article
Comparative Analysis of Markerless Motion-Capture Models for Assessing Football Kinematics During 30 m Long-Pass Tasks
by Donghao Wang, Junkai Yu, Shiqin Chen, Jingran Yang, Weichao Jiang, Yikang Gong and Chong Luo
Sensors 2026, 26(12), 3654; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26123654 - 8 Jun 2026
Viewed by 271
Abstract
This study was based on a 30 m inside-foot long-pass scenario and aimed to preliminarily evaluate the agreement between MediaPipe Pose, DWPose, YOLO-Pose, and Xsens, as well as their practical utility under real-field conditions. Twelve elite male football players performed 15 consecutive long-passes, [...] Read more.
This study was based on a 30 m inside-foot long-pass scenario and aimed to preliminarily evaluate the agreement between MediaPipe Pose, DWPose, YOLO-Pose, and Xsens, as well as their practical utility under real-field conditions. Twelve elite male football players performed 15 consecutive long-passes, with data collected simultaneously using Xsens and two smartphones positioned at 15° and 35° to the right front of the participants. The Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC (2,1)) and Bland–Altman analysis were used to evaluate discrete kinematic measures. Continuous kinematic agreement was assessed using Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and the Coefficient of Multiple Determination (CMD), while Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) and Statistical non-Parametric Mapping (SnPM) compared differences across the entire analysis interval. Across the three models, CMD ranged from 0.13 ± 0.17 to 0.67 ± 0.25, and RMSE ranged from 9.88 ± 8.20° to 39.92 ± 10.44°. The SPM and SnPM results showed that significant differences were mainly concentrated in the bilateral hip, knee, and ankle joints. The three models cannot yet be used for field-based high-precision kinematic data measurement; however, MediaPipe Pose and DWPose may be selectively used for rapid screening of movement patterns and analysis of movement trends in football-specific technical movements. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biomechanics Research in Sports with Wearable Sensors)
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21 pages, 2273 KB  
Article
Measurement of Cognitive and Kinematic Adaptation in Exoskeleton-Assisted Locomotion: Validation of an XR-Based Framework
by Nicola Abeni, Riccardo Costa, Emilia Scalona, Diego Torricelli and Matteo Lancini
Sensors 2026, 26(12), 3635; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26123635 - 7 Jun 2026
Viewed by 389
Abstract
Robotic assistive devices, such as exoskeletons, are increasingly employed in walking rehabilitation. Therefore, the measurement of both movement kinematics and cognitive workload is important to understand this human–robot interaction in real-world contexts. To address this need this study presents the validation of a [...] Read more.
Robotic assistive devices, such as exoskeletons, are increasingly employed in walking rehabilitation. Therefore, the measurement of both movement kinematics and cognitive workload is important to understand this human–robot interaction in real-world contexts. To address this need this study presents the validation of a framework integrating inertial motion capture (Xsens) and eye-tracking sensor (Pupil Neon) within a Mixed Reality (Meta Quest 3) architecture. We developed an overground dual-task paradigm in which holographic numbers appear in the user’s peripheral vision. This setup actively stimulates visuospatial attention while quantifying kinematic and cognitive output. To validate the framework, the protocol has been tested on 30 healthy subjects across repeated exoskeleton training sessions. Statistical analyses revealed that the Coefficient of Multiple Correlation (CMC) and Spectral Arc Length (SPARC), calculated on the shank angular velocity, together with the Step Length Variability, exhibited significant time effects (p < 0.01), mapping the transition toward automated gait. Concurrently, pupillometric data demonstrated a measurable reduction in neurocognitive demand; specifically, the Task-Evoked Pupillary Response (TEPR) decreased significantly across progressive training sessions (p < 0.05). With this work, we validated a measurement protocol that aims to provide a novel methodology for objectively evaluating motor and cognitive adaptation in wearable assistive devices. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Sensing Technologies in Sports Biomechanics)
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12 pages, 10990 KB  
Article
Surface-Quality Optimisation in Cobalt Ferrite Ultrasonic Elliptical Vibration Cutting of H62 Brass
by Yajue He, Zhihuang Shen, Shicong You, Xu Zhang, Junfeng Huang and Chaoshuai Qi
Coatings 2026, 16(6), 682; https://doi.org/10.3390/coatings16060682 - 6 Jun 2026
Viewed by 202
Abstract
Cobalt ferrite (CoFe2O4) magnetostrictive ultrasonic elliptical vibration cutting (UEVC) tools have recently emerged as a low-cost, low-eddy-loss alternative to piezoelectric and rare-earth-driven cutting heads. The structural design and resonance characterisation of such a dual-bending CoFe2O4 UEVC [...] Read more.
Cobalt ferrite (CoFe2O4) magnetostrictive ultrasonic elliptical vibration cutting (UEVC) tools have recently emerged as a low-cost, low-eddy-loss alternative to piezoelectric and rare-earth-driven cutting heads. The structural design and resonance characterisation of such a dual-bending CoFe2O4 UEVC tool was reported in our previous work. The present paper builds directly on that platform and addresses a different objective: to determine how the four primary process variables—feed rate, cutting speed, cutting depth, and inter-channel phase difference—should be set to obtain the best surface quality on a representative ductile metal. Using H62 brass as the workpiece and a single-crystal diamond tool with a 0.2 mm nose radius and 60° included angle, single-factor experiments are run on a custom 5-axis precision lathe, and surface roughness is mapped in both the cutting and the feed direction with a Keyence VK-X1000 confocal microscope (Keyence, Osaka, Japan). The speed ratio K = Vc/(2πfA) is computed for every test point so that each result can be classified as belonging to the continuous-contact or to the intermittent-contact UEVC regime. The results show: (i) feed rate has a non-monotonic effect, with an optimum at 1 μm where ductile-mode separation is achieved without secondary tool-trajectory overlap, reducing the cutting direction roughness by up to 45% with respect to conventional cutting (CC); (ii) the UEVC advantage shrinks at high cutting speeds because the speed ratio approaches unity and the intermittent regime collapses, but is still 12.6%–38% over the 50–375 mm/s range tested; (iii) the relative improvement is largest at low depth and decreases as the depth grows, retaining 11.5%–49% gain over CC across 0.5–10 μm; (iv) the inter-channel phase difference, which controls the geometry of the tool-tip ellipse, is the strongest single lever—at 60°, the trajectory becomes an oblique ellipse whose major axis is tilted with respect to the cutting direction, bringing the cutting direction roughness down to 1.21 μm against 2.82 μm for CC, a 57% reduction. A simple kinematic argument links this optimum to a maximum effective separation duration per cycle and offers a design rule for analogous UEVC tools. Full article
(This article belongs to the Collection Hard Protective Coatings on Tools and Machine Elements)
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14 pages, 777 KB  
Article
Phase-Specific Biomechanical Reorganization After Robotic Rehabilitation in Patients with Stroke: A Sensor-Derived Waveform Analysis
by Hande Argunsah, Hülya Şirzai, Yigit Can Gökhan, Güneş Yavuzer and Köksal Holoğlu
Life 2026, 16(6), 956; https://doi.org/10.3390/life16060956 - 5 Jun 2026
Viewed by 226
Abstract
Stroke-related gait impairments are frequently associated with deficits in trunk control, movement coordination, and dynamic stability. Although robotic-assisted gait rehabilitation has shown promising clinical benefits, phase-specific biomechanical adaptations following rehabilitation remain incompletely understood. This study investigated phase-specific biomechanical adaptations following robotic-assisted gait rehabilitation [...] Read more.
Stroke-related gait impairments are frequently associated with deficits in trunk control, movement coordination, and dynamic stability. Although robotic-assisted gait rehabilitation has shown promising clinical benefits, phase-specific biomechanical adaptations following rehabilitation remain incompletely understood. This study investigated phase-specific biomechanical adaptations following robotic-assisted gait rehabilitation in individuals with stroke using sensor-derived waveform analysis. Rehabilitation was performed three times per week over approximately 5–6 weeks using treadmill-based robotic gait training under dynamic body-weight support conditions. Pre- and post-intervention kinematic data were collected using a sensor-based motion analysis system. Joint kinematics, trunk motion, and center of gravity (COG) displacement were analyzed across the normalized gait cycle using waveform-based effect size analysis, statistical parametric mapping, principal component analysis, and k-means clustering to explore inter-individual adaptation patterns. Thirteen post-stroke hemiplegia patients (10 males; age = 63.9 ± 13.8 years), including six subacute and seven chronic stroke survivors, completed 16 rehabilitation sessions. The most prominent improvements were observed in trunk lateral flexion, particularly during loading response (d = 0.47, p < 0.01), indicating enhanced frontal plane trunk stability. Trunk flexion–extension showed reduced compensatory motion, whereas hip and knee adaptations were smaller and phase-dependent. COG displacement decreased across the gait cycle, reflecting improved dynamic stability. Step length increased significantly on both hemiplegic (Δ = +5.73 cm, p = 0.024) and intact sides (Δ = +8.83 cm, p = 0.007), while cadence and load symmetry remained unchanged. Clustering analysis revealed heterogeneous adaptation profiles rather than distinct responder groups. Chronic participants demonstrated greater variability within the Principal Component Analysis space compared to subacute participants, suggesting more variable and individualized biomechanical reorganization patterns rather than clearly separable recovery categories. Overall, robotic rehabilitation induced inter-individual biomechanical adaptations, predominantly involving proximal trunk control and stabilization strategies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in the Rehabilitation of Stroke)
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31 pages, 10078 KB  
Article
Reachability-Oriented Pose Estimation and Efficient Path Planning for Tomato Harvesting Robots
by Junyao Yan, Jianjun Yin, Jintang Hu and Kefan Lai
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(11), 5610; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16115610 - 3 Jun 2026
Viewed by 263
Abstract
Agriculture is currently transitioning toward higher intelligence and facility-based production, where harvesting robots play a crucial role in enhancing efficiency and ensuring standardized output. Addressing the challenges of inaccurate picking pose estimation and limited reachability in greenhouse environments, this paper proposes a reachable [...] Read more.
Agriculture is currently transitioning toward higher intelligence and facility-based production, where harvesting robots play a crucial role in enhancing efficiency and ensuring standardized output. Addressing the challenges of inaccurate picking pose estimation and limited reachability in greenhouse environments, this paper proposes a reachable grasping pose estimation method based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). First, initial poses are calculated via instance segmentation and keypoint extraction. Subsequently, a fitness function is constructed based on inverse kinematics, and the PSO algorithm is employed to iteratively search for optimal reachable poses. To further tackle planning difficulties in confined spaces, a two-stage path planning method based on cost maps is introduced. A series of performance metrics were designed to validate the proposed pose estimation and path planning methods through simulation experiments. In real-world field tests, the system achieved a harvesting success rate of 85%, significantly outperforming existing methods. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach substantially enhances the operational feasibility and success rate of tomato harvesting robots. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Agricultural Science and Technology)
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21 pages, 21257 KB  
Article
Unsupervised Machine Learning for Dynamic Slope Stability Classification: A Comparative Evaluation of PCA-K-Means, SOM, and Hybrid Algorithms Using InSAR Time-Series Data
by Dominic Owusu-Ansah, Joaquim Tinoco, Steffan Davies and José C. Matos
Appl. Sci. 2026, 16(11), 5577; https://doi.org/10.3390/app16115577 - 3 Jun 2026
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Abstract
Interpreting complex, non-linear Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) displacement time-series data for infrastructure risk assessment remains a significant geotechnical challenge. This is particularly evident in regions with established road and railway infrastructures, where the primary objective is monitoring the entire network to ensure [...] Read more.
Interpreting complex, non-linear Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) displacement time-series data for infrastructure risk assessment remains a significant geotechnical challenge. This is particularly evident in regions with established road and railway infrastructures, where the primary objective is monitoring the entire network to ensure safety and operational continuity. Because landslide displacement is a highly complex process affected by a combination of internal geological conditions and external triggers, time-series data inherently encode non-linear trends and periodic fluctuations. To address this, a data-driven framework utilizing a sliding-window transformation to engineer temporal-kinematic features is proposed, providing a broader framework for the contextualization of slope stability assessment from a network perspective. This is paired with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for dimensionality reduction and evaluated across four unsupervised architectures: K-means, Self-Organising Maps (SOMs), Hybrid SOM-K-means, and PCA-K-means. The comparative evaluation reveals that the PCA-K-means pipeline performed best, offering a highly efficient and scalable workflow. The analysis revealed that the optimized PCA-K-means architecture successfully captured 79.20% of the kinematic variance across the first two principal components. Furthermore, it achieved a robust Between-Cluster-to-Total-Sum-of-Squares (BCSS/TSS) ratio of 71.70%, an optimal Silhouette Score of 0.320, and a low Quantisation Error (QE) of 0.90, demonstrating superior spatial separation and geometric accuracy compared to traditional heuristic methods. When cross-validated against static topographic susceptibility models, the dynamic kinematic clusters exhibited a 23% spatial convergence at the polar bounds of risk, successfully grounding the algorithm’s predictions in physically verified geomorphological features. Relying on the statistical volatility of displacements, this optimal model successfully partitioned the data into five distinct geotechnical risk classes, ranging from stable (Class A) to extreme risk (Class E). The results demonstrate that the developed dynamic framework provides a highly reliable, actionable tool for proactive, large-scale slope stability and infrastructure risk assessment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Section Computing and Artificial Intelligence)
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