With the introduction of commercially available programmable legged robots, a generic software method for detection of abnormalities in the robots’ locomotion is required. Our approach is to gain satisfactory results using a bare minimum amount of hardware feedback; In most cases we are able detect faults using only the joint angle sensors. Methods for recognising several types of collision as ...

A three-level functional architecture for a team of mobile robots is described in detail, including the deenition of the role assigned to each level, the main concepts involved, and the corresponding implementation for each individual robot. The architecture is oriented towards teams of fully autonomous cooperative robots, able to carry out diierent types of cooperative tasks. Complexity is red...

With the diversification of robots, modularization robots has been attracting attention. In our previous study, we developed a robot that mimics principle human joint drive using straight-fiber-type pneumatic rubber artificial muscle (“artificial muscle”) and magnetorheological fluid brake (“MR brake”). The variable viscoelastic joints have modularized. Therefore, this paper evaluates basic cha...

This paper is focused on the kinematic control of redundant modular robots for trajectory tracing. Based on the geometric numerical inverse kinematic algorithm developed for modular robots, a new online control method is presented. In this method, the inverse kinematic solution can be optimized through constructing a weighted matrix. Following this approach, some fundamental interpolation algor...

Developing robots with social skills and understanding is a critical step towards enabling them to cooperate with people as capable partners, to communicate with people intuitively, and to learn quickly and effectively from natural human instruction. These abilities would enable many new and exciting applications for robots that require them to play a long-term, supportive, and helpful role in ...

Abstract The McKibben pneumatic actuator (MPA) is a soft used for performing various practical functions in robots. Particularly, many dynamic robots have been realized using MPAs. However, there trade-off between torque generated by MPA and the range of motion joint. In this study, we focus on jumping leg-type robot use an elliptical pulley whose moment arm changes depending robot’s posture. T...

This paper describes the joint approach of three research groups to enable a heterogeneous team of robots to exchange belief. The communication framework presented imposes little restrictions on the design and implementation of the individual autonomous mobile systems. The three groups have individually taken part in the RoboCup F2000 league since 1998. Although recent rule changes allow for mo...

Relative localisation of mobile robots can provide useful information to applications, from formation control, to joint exploration and inspection. One way to obtain relative localisation is to measure distances between the multiple robots. In this scope, distance estimates based on RF ranging data can be beneficial for small/inexpensive communicating robots that have no other means of measurin...

The dynamic model of redundantly actuated mobile robots with powered caster wheels is derived based on vehicle dynamics. The contact stability problem of wheeled mobile robots is introduced and stable contact condition that characterizes the bounds of contact stability is derived. Sliding mode observer is proposed to estimate the robot velocity using wheel angular velocity and joint torque info...