The paper focuses on the problem of trajectory planning of flexible redundant robot manipulators (FRM) in joint space. Compared to irredundant flexible manipulators, FRMs present additional possibilities in trajectory planning due to their kinematics redundancy. A trajectory planning method to minimize vibration of FRMs is presented based on Genetic Algorithms (GAs). Kinematics redundancy is in...

Feedback linearization is one of the major academic approaches for controlling exible joint robots. This contribution investigates the discrete-time implementation of the feedback linearization approach for a realistic threeaxis robot model. A simulation study of high speed tracking with model uncertainty is performed. It is assumed that full state measurements of the linearizing states are ava...

Metamorphic robots with shape-changing capabilities provide a powerful and flexible approach to complex tasks in unstructured environments. However, due to their dynamic topology and decentralized configuration, metamorphic robots demand control mechanisms that go beyond those used by conventional robots. This paper builds on our previous results of hormone-based control, and develops a novel d...

Objective: Evaluate two models for adjusting autonomy in mobile robots, seeking to find out what is the best way for the operator to interact with the system with as many robots as possible. The first model is the most used in mobile robots, the second proposes a flexible autonomy management. Background: There are different ways of adjusting the autonomy level in man-machine systems: “Adjustabl...

Spiders rely on a hydraulic system to stretch their legs but use muscles make flex. The compound drive of hydraulics and muscle makes an integrate dexterous structure with powerful locomotion abilities, which perfectly meets the primary requirements advanced robots. Inspired by this hydraulics-muscle co-drive joint, novel flexible joint actuator was proposed its driving characteristics were pre...

Robots that are designed to act in human-centered environments put up the need for a flexible and adaptive representation of task knowledge. This results on the one hand from the continuously changing and hardly predictable state of an environment that is populated with humans and robots. On the other hand, a task knowledge description of a robot which cooperates with humans has to be adaptable...

Smart factories that allow flexible production of highly individualized goods require flexible robots, usable in efficient assembly lines. Compliant robots can work safely in shared environments with domain experts, who have to program such robots easily for arbitrary tasks. We propose a new domain-specific language and toolchain for robot assembly tasks for compliant manipulators. With the Lig...

Future very large space structures, such as solar power stations and space telescopes, will need to be assembled in orbit by teams of cooperating space robots. Controlling these space robots is difficult due to the dynamic interactions forces between the robots and the large and very flexible structures. Sensing and actuation are also limited in space. A number of control algorithms have been p...

Legged robots are highly attractive for military purposes such as carrying heavy loads on uneven terrain for long durations because of the higher mobility they give on rough terrain compared to wheeled vehicles/robots. Existing state-of-the-art quadruped robots developed by Boston Dynamics such as LittleDog and BigDog do not have flexible bodies. It can be easily seen that the agility of quadru...

This paper presents a method for the dynamic modeling of parallel robots with flexible links and rigid moving platform based on finite element theory. The relation between elastic displacements of links is investigated, taking into consideration the coupling effects of elastic motion and rigid motion. The kinematic and dynamic constraint conditions of elastic displacements of flexible parallel ...