Robotics, Volume 11, Issue 5

Reinforcement Learning (RL) is gaining much research attention because it allows the system to learn from interacting with the environment. Yet, with all these successful applications, the application of RL in direct joint torque control without the...

Teaching robotics requires interdisciplinary skills and a good creativity, providing instructions and hands-on experiences, exploiting different kinds of learning. Two kinds of learning methods are commonly used: the ‘visual learning’ and the ‘audito...

This paper presents a comparison study of three control design approaches for humanoid balancing based on the Center of Mass ($CoM$) stabilization and body posture adjustment. The comparison was carried out under controlled circumstances allowing other...

The adoption of Digital Twin (DT) solutions for industrial purposes is increasing among small- and medium-sized enterprises and is already being integrated into many large-scale companies. As there is an increasing need for faster production and shor...

Handing over objects is a collaborative task that requires participants to synchronize their actions in terms of space and time, as well as their adherence to social standards. If one participant is a social robot and the other a visually impaired hu...

This study aims to provide a robust trajectory tracking controller which guarantees the prescribed performance of a robot manipulator, both in transient and steady-state modes, experiencing parametric uncertainties. The main core of the controller is...

This paper presents a novel walking hybrid-kinematics robot that can be reconfigured to have three, five, and six degrees of freedom (DOFs) for adsorption machining of large structures. A symmetric 3PRPR or 3PRRR parallel mechanism with three transla...

In this study, a novel end-to-end path planning algorithm based on deep reinforcement learning is proposed for aerial robots deployed in dense environments. The learning agent finds an obstacle-free way around the provided rough, global path by only...

Robot assistants and service robots are rapidly spreading out as cutting-edge automation solutions to support people in their everyday life in workplaces, health centers, and domestic environments. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic drastically increase...

Exoskeletons are powerful tools for aiding humans with pathological conditions, in dangerous environments or in manually exhausting tasks. Typically, they are designed for specific maximum scenarios without taking into account the diversity of tasks...

Robots are increasingly used in healthcare to support caregivers in their daily work routines. To ensure an effortless and easy interaction between caregivers and robots, communication via natural language is expected from robots. However, robotic sp...

We introduce a kinematic graph in this article. A kinematic graph results from structuring the data obtained from the sampling method for sampling-based motion planning algorithms in robotics with the motivation to adapt the method to the positioning...

Object manipulation automation in logistic warehouses has recently been actively researched. However, shelf replenishment is a challenge that requires the precise and careful handling of densely piled objects. The irregular arrangement of objects on...

Physically inspired models of the stochastic nature of the human-robot-environment interaction are generally difficult to derive from first principles, thus alternative data-driven approaches are an attractive option. In this article, Gaussian proces...

In metal sheet processing for automotive application, it is crucial to guarantee high robot dynamics for reduced cycle times and adequate components accuracy to be competitive in the market. Since the two aspects are closely and inversely related, th...

The paper presents RoboNav, a cost-effective and accurate decimeter-grade navigation system that can be used for deployment in the field of autonomous agricultural robots. The novelty of the system is the reliance on a dual GPS configuration based on...

This document presents an assisted operation system of a robotic arm for positioning near an explosive device selected by the user through the visualization of the cameras on the screen. Two non-converging cameras mounted on the robotic arm in camera...

The daily lifestyle of an average human has changed drastically. Robotics and AI systems are applied to many fields, including the medical field. An autonomous wheelchair that improves the degree of independence that a wheelchair user has can be a ve...

Geriatric disorders, strokes, spinal cord injuries, trauma, and workplace injuries are all prominent causes of upper limb disability. A two-degrees-of-freedom (DoFs) end-effector type robot, iTbot (intelligent therapeutic robot) was designed to provi...

Continuum robots are increasingly being used in industrial and medical applications due to their high number of degrees of freedom (DoF), large workspace and their ability to operate dexterously. However, the positional accuracy of conventional conti...

Dance therapy can have significant physical, emotional and cognitive benefits for older adults. In particular, social robots can be developed to autonomously facilitate dance sessions to engage these individuals with the aim of improving quality of l...

Designing controllers for skid-steered wheeled robots is complex due to the interaction of the tires with the ground and wheel slip due to the skid-steer driving mechanism, leading to nonlinear dynamics. Due to the recent success of reinforcement lea...

This work presents and experimentally tests the framework used by our context-aware, distributed team of small Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) capable of operating in real time, in an autonomous fashion, and under constrained communications. Our frame...

The presence of collaborative robots in industrial environments requires that their control strategies include collision avoidance in the generation of trajectories. In general, collision avoidance is performed via additional displacements of the kin...

COVID-19 may not be a ‘youth disease’ but it nevertheless impacts the life of young people dramatically, loneliness and a negative mood being an unexpected additional pandemic. Many young people rely on social media for their feeling of c...

The technological advances in computational systems have enabled very complex computer vision and machine learning approaches to perform efficiently and accurately. These new approaches can be considered a new set of tools to reshape the visual SLAM...

Learning through augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) experiences has become a valuable approach in modern robotics education. This study evaluated this approach and investigated how 99 first-year industrial engineering students explored r...

The aim of this research effort was to develop a framework for a structure from motion (SfM)-based 3D reconstruction approach with a team of autonomous small unmanned aerial systems (sUASs) using a distributed behavior model. The framework is compose...

Soft robotics represents a rising trend in recent years, due to the ability to work in unstructured environments or in strict contact with humans. Introducing soft parts, robots can adapt to various contexts overcoming limits relative to the rigid st...

This paper presents a novel trajectory planning approach for nonlinear dynamical systems; a multi-rotor drone, built on an optimization-based framework proposed by the authors named the Nonlinear Model Predictive Horizon. In the present work, this me...

This paper presents an optimized robust trajectory control system for an autonomous tiltrotor bi-copter based on an incremental nonlinear dynamic inversion (INDI) strategy combined with a set of PID/PD controllers. The methodology includes a lower le...

Controlling a fleet of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) is a complex problem of optimization. Many approached have been conducted for solving this problem. They range from heuristics, which usually do not find an optimum, to mathematical models, which...