Robotics, Volume 11, Issue 2

This study aims to investigate the effects of the degree of freedom (DOF) and weight of the hand exoskeleton (HE) on hand joint mobility function (ease of movement, movement range) in fine hand use activities. A three-digit passive HE prototype was b...

Particle swarm optimisation (PSO) is a swarm intelligence algorithm used for controlling robotic swarms in applications such as source localisation. However, conventional PSO algorithms consider only the intensity of the received signal. Wavefield si...

This study proposes a performance index for the dimensional optimization of parallel manipulators with specific tasks. In particular, the index evaluates the dexterity of the mechanism to be designed and compares it with that of the required specific...

In a factory with different kinds of spatial atmosphere (warehouses, corridors, small or large workshops with varying sizes of obstacles and distribution patterns), the robot’s generated paths for navigation tasks mainly depend on the represent...

Straight-line needle insertion is a prevalent tool in surgical interventions in the brain, such as Deep Brain Stimulation and Convection-Enhanced Delivery, that treat a range of conditions from Alzheimer’s disease to brain cancer. Using a steer...

This paper aims to improve the positioning accuracy of serial industrial manipulators using force feedback in manufacturing processes by implementing an elasto-geometrical model-based control. Initially, the real-time position control strategy using...

Collaborative robots (or cobots) are robots that are capable of safely operating in a shared environment or interacting with humans. In recent years, cobots have become increasingly common. Compliant actuators are critical in the design of cobots. In...

Bin picking is a challenging problem that involves using a robotic manipulator to remove, one-by-one, a set of objects randomly stacked in a container. In order to provide ground truth data for evaluating heuristic or machine learning perception syst...

COVID-19 patients are strongly affected in terms of limb motion when imbedded during the acute phase of the infection, but also during the course of recovery therapies. Peculiarities are investigated for design requirements for medical devices in lim...

The foundation and emphasis of robotic manipulator control is Inverse Kinematics (IK). Due to the complexity of derivation, difficulty of computation, and redundancy, traditional IK solutions pose numerous challenges to the operation of a variety of...

The complexity of forward kinematic modelling increases with the increase in the degrees of freedom for a manipulator. To reduce the computational weight and time lag for desired output transformation, this paper proposes a forward kinematic model ma...

The term perception-driven obstacle-aided locomotion (POAL) was proposed to describe locomotion in which a snake robot leverages a sensory-perceptual system to exploit the surrounding operational environment and to identify walls, obstacles, or other...

As a result of several governments closing educational facilities in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, almost 80% of the world’s students were not in school for several weeks. Schools and universities are thus increasing their efforts to lev...

Positioning a camera during laparoscopic and robotic procedures is challenging and essential for successful operations. During surgery, if the camera view is not optimal, surgery becomes more complex and potentially error-prone. To address this need,...

In this work, the concept and mechanical design of a novel compact, lightweight, omnidirectional three-legged robot, featuring a hybrid serial–parallel topology including leg compliance is proposed. The proposal focusses deeply on the design as...

By combining stochastic variational inference with message passing algorithms, we show how to solve the highly complex problem of navigation and avoidance in distributed multi-robot systems in a computationally tractable manner, allowing online imple...

Scoliosis is a spinal disorder that is conventionally treated using rigid or soft braces. Computational methods such as finite element-based models are used to investigate the mechanics of the spine and the effect of braces. Most spinal braces are ei...

This paper presents dynamics modeling of a Delta robot with three revolute legs and a telescopic rod. Firstly, two generalized coordinate systems are established to describe the relationship between the movement of the telescopic rod and the position...

Path planning is a key technology for the autonomous mobility of intelligent robots. However, there are few studies on how to carry out path planning in real time under the confrontation environment. Therefore, based on the deep deterministic policy...

The deflection compensation of a hydraulically actuated loader crane is presented. Measurement data from the laboratory are used to design a neural network deflection estimator. Kinematic expressions are derived and used with the deflection estimator...

A conventional feedback-linearization-based controller, when applied to a tiltrotor (eight inputs), results in extensive changes in tilting angles, which are not expected in practice. To solve this problem, we introduce the novel concept of “UA...

The manipulability of a robotic arm may be defined based on ease of motion in different directions or ease of applying force/torque. In this study, we use manipulability measures to investigate how the kinematics of robots can be employed to calculat...

This paper presents a method of optimizing the design of robotic manipulators using a novel kinematic model pruning technique. The optimization departs from an predefined candidate linkage consisting of a initial topology and geometry. It allows simu...

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented stress on the world healthcare system and demonstrated the need for modern automated robotic solutions for numerous medical applications. Often, robots that provide spherical motion of the end-effector a...