Executing agile quadrotor maneuvers with cablesuspended payloads is a challenging problem and complications induced by the dynamics typically require trajectory optimization. State-of-the-art approaches often need significant computation time and complex parameter tuning. We present a novel dynamical model and a fast trajectory optimization algorithm for quadrotors with a cable-suspended payloa...

The following problem appears in robotics. A number of small, circular robots live in a common planar workspace. Each is attached by a exible cable of nite length to a point on the boundary of this workspace. Each robot has a target point in the workspace it must reach. When a robot has reached its target, its cable will have been dragged out into the workspace and possibly pushed and bent by o...

The weakly nonlinear in-plane free vibrations of a single suspended cable, or a coupled system of suspended cables, may be classified as gravity modes (no tension variations to leading order) and elasto-gravity modes (tension and vertical displacement equally important). The gravity mode (probably the most common type of vibration of relatively inelastic spans) does not exist for particular val...

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This paper presents the development of an Intelligent Mini Robot Fingers by using the Shape Memory Alloy (SMA). Taking into consideration the advantages of the SMA, a prototype of mini robot fingers is developed which will be actuated by the SMA. The mini robot fingers has 4 fingers with 3 degrees of freedom (DOF) in each finger. Hence, 12 DOFs of robot fingers are developed to allow a greater ...

One of the primary duties in regular maintenance electrical distribution networks is cable stripping operation. In this paper, a unique robot proposed to overcome drawbacks conventional manual operation stripping, such as poor efficiency, low safety, and high labor intensity. This innovative cable-stripping made up rotating mechanism, gripping component, cutter feeding mechanism that can be adj...

This paper presents a slave robot carrying an ultrasound probe for remote echographic examination. This robot is integrated in a master-slave system called robotic tele-echography (TER). The system allows an expert operator to perform a remote diagnosis from echographic data he acquires on a patient located in a distant place. The originality of this robot lies in its architecture: the cable-dr...

The National Robotics Engineering Consortium and UltraStrip Systems Inc. have developed a highly flexible and productive robot to strip paint from large ships and other large ferro-magnetic structures based on the patents obtained by UltraStrip Systems, Inc. (US patents: 6,425,340; 5,849,099; 5,628,271). Removal of corrosion and coatings from large vessels has become a serious economic and envi...

This paper presents the design, analysis, and testing of a fully actuated modular spherical tensegrity robot for co-robotic and space exploration applications. Robots built from tensegrity structures (composed of pure tensile and compression elements) have many potential benefits including high robustness through redundancy, many degrees-of-freedom in movement and flexible design. However, to t...