This paper utilizes the idea of “robot ergonomics” in which robotic tasks are evaluated according to ergonomics criteria. Robot performance is continuously reeorded in terms of total motion for each robotic link, the load applied on each joint, and the accuracy of each motion. Evaluating robot motion can assist in the design of a robotic cell, where robot position and layout of peripheral equip...

Robots are envisioned to collaborate with people in tasks that require physical manipulation such as a robot instructing a human in assembling household furniture, a human teaching a robot how to repair machinery, or a robot and a human collaboratively completing construction work. These scenarios characterize joint actions in which the robot and the human must effectively communicate and coord...

Novel actuator principles such as flexible fluidic actuators allow for the development of lightweight artificial hands. Improvements are the compact realisation of a large number of articulations without exceeding the size of human hands. This progress closes the gap between simple grippers and highly sophisticated robot hands for teleoperation. Applications are prosthetic hands as well as huma...

All mammals but humans use whiskers in order to rapidly acquire information about objects in the vicinity of the head. Collisions of the head and objects can be avoided as the contact point is moved from the body surface to the whiskers. Such a behavior is also highly desirable during many robot tasks such as for human-robot interaction. Using novel capacitive proximity sensors, robots sense wh...

Machines and robots in the near future will share environments, and often come directly in touch with humans. This is to happen in several applications domains, including domestic applications (domotics), entertainment, assistance , cooperative manipulation tasks, teleoperation, human augmentation, haptic interfaces and exoskeletons. Physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI) poses many challenges...

The electric arc furnace (EAF) is used to produce high quality steel from steel scraps. The EAF uses plasma arc to generate heat for melting scarp or direct reduced iron (DRI). The liquid metal should be drained from the tap hole. Manual tapping operation of the EAF in the hot environment around the furnace is a potentially dangerous and time consuming task for the workers. Therefore, it is ess...

This paper presents a methodology to analyze dynamics of flexible space robot using bond graph. In case of space robots the position and orientation of the satellite main body may change when the manipulator moves. Motion of the space robots also induces vibrating motions in structurally flexible manipulators. Researchers working on terrestrial flexible robot arms principally have focused on is...

The subject of this paper is the design, control, and evaluation of a biped–climbing robot featuring a new hybrid hip joint. The hybrid hip provides both prismatic and revolute motion, discretely, to the robot, using a single actuator. This is intended to improve its adaptability in confined environments and its capability to maneuver over and around obstacles. Optimization of the hybrid hip jo...