In this paper, the path following controller of an omnidirectional mobile robot (OMR) has been extended in such a way that the forward velocity has been optimized and the actuator velocity constraints have been taken into account. Both have been attained through the proposed model predictive control (MPC) framework. The forward velocity has been included into the objective function, while the a...

In this paper the design of a multi-finger force-reflecting haptic interface device for teleoperational grasping is introduced. The haptic interface or “master” controller device is worn on the human operator’s hand and measured human finger positions are used to control the finger positions of a remote grasping manipulator or “slave” device. The slave may be a physical robotic grasping manipul...

The Dynamical Systems Design department at the Eindhoven University of Eindhoven is actively researching the design and control of robotic systems. Examples are Amigo, the service robot competing in the RoboCup @home league, the mid-size league soccer robots of Tech United and the Tulip which is the humanoid robot competing in the RoboCup humanoid adult league. One of the new research activitie...

Dual-stage actuator design for hard disk drives via composite nonlinear feedback control is presented, which consists of a primary actuator, the voice coil motor and a secondary actuator, the suspension piezoelectric microactuator. The first is effective in both track seeking and following stages to produce fast rising time and low overshoot and the latter works in track following stage only to...

virtual water adds a new dimension to crop trades and provides a new way of thinking about water scarcity. a systematic analysis of virtual water flows requires integration of all critical drivers of virtual water flows under a single consistent framework. the aim of this study was to assess virtual water flows related to trades of grain crops (wheat, corn, rice, and coarse cereals) and their i...

As tape recording density increases, high-frequency track following capability of the tape head actuator becomes more important. This paper details the mechanical design and experimental analysis of a dual state actuator tape head. The dual stage actuator design combines a traditional voice coil motor for low frequency track following with a piezoelectric actuator for high-frequency track follo...

Abstract To improve positioning accuracy in a head-positioning control system for hard disk drives, we have developed a triple-stage-actuator system on a spin-stand tester. In this system, the first stage is a VCM actuator for moving a head-stack assembly, the second stage is a PZT actuator for moving a suspension, and the third stage is a thermal actuator for moving read/write elements. The fr...

A new design for a multi-layer dielectric elastomer actuator, reinforced with periodic stiffeners is presented. The resulting actuator enables complex out-ofplane motion without the need of the elastomer membrane prestretch. An in situ optical imaging system is used to capture the complex deformation pattern and track the non-planar displacement and curvature under the applied voltage. The role...

A new design for a multi-layer dielectric elastomer actuator, reinforced with periodic stiffeners is presented. The resulting actuator enables complex out-ofplane motion without the need of the elastomer membrane prestretch. An in situ optical imaging system is used to capture the complex deformation pattern and track the non-planar displacement and curvature under the applied voltage. The role...

This paper presents a “Fingerprint Method” for modeling and subsequently characterizing stochastically controlled actuator arrays. The actuator arrays are built from small actuator cells with structural elasticity. These cells are controlled using a bistable stochastic process wherein all cells are given a common input probability (control) value which they use to determine whether to actuate o...