Insect wings in flight typically deform under the combined aerodynamic force and wing inertia; whichever is dominant depends on the mass ratio defined as m = sh / fc , where sh is the surface density of the wing, f is the density of the air, and c is the characteristic length of the wing. To study the differences that the wing inertia makes in the aerodynamic performance of the deformable wing,...

This paper describes the development of a novel humanoid robot foot/ankle based on an orientation Parallel Kinematic Mechanism for intelligent and flexible control. With three identical Universal-Prismatic-Spherical prismatic-actuated limbs and a central Universal-Revolute passive limb, the PKM can perform three degrees of freedom rotation motions. In order to enable the humanoid robot safely t...

In this paper, the important formation control problem of nonholonomic wheeled mobile robots is investigated via a leader-follower strategy. To this end, the dynamics model of the considered wheeled mobile robot is derived using Lagrange equations of motion. Then, using ADAMS multi-body simulation software, the obtained dynamics of the wheeled system in MATLAB software is verified. After that, ...

In this paper, a novel adaptive sliding mode control for rigid robot manipulators is proposed. In the proposed system, since there may exist explicit unknown parameters and perturbations, a Lyapunov based approach is presented to increase system robustness, even in presence of arbitrarily large (but not infinite) discontinuous perturbations. To control and track the robot, a continuous controll...

A flexible-joint robot manipulator is a complex system because it is nonlinear, multivariable, highly coupled along with joint flexibility and uncertainty. To overcome flexibility, several methods have been proposed based on flexible model. This paper presents a novel method for controlling flexible-joint robot manipulators. A novel control law is presented by compensating flexibility to form a...

We studied the effects of wing deformation on the aerodynamic forces of wings of hovering hoverflies by solving the Navier-Stokes equations on a dynamically deforming grid, employing the recently measured wing deformation data of hoverflies in free-flight. Three hoverflies were considered. By taking out the camber deformation and the spanwise twist deformation one by one and by comparing the re...

Over the last decades, there has been great interest in understanding the aerodynamics of flapping flight and development of flapping wing Micro Air Vehicles (FWMAVs). The camber deformation and twisting has been demonstrated quantitatively in a number of insects, but making artificial wings that mimic those features is a challenge. This paper reports the development and characterization of art...

The effect of wing flexibility in hoverflies was investigated using an at-scale mechanical model. Unlike dynamically-scaled models, an at-scale model can include all phenomena related to motion and deformation of the wing during flapping. For this purpose, an at-scale polymer wing mimicking a hoverfly was fabricated using a custom micromolding process. The wing has venation and corrugation prof...

a new type of backbone robot is presented in this paper. the core idea is to use a cross shape mechanism with the principle of functioning of the scissors linkages, known as a pantograph. although this continuum arm acts quite similar to tendon-driven robot, this manipulator does not include any tendon in its structure. this design does not suffer from the weaknesses of the continuum design suc...