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 ...

Abslraet--We consider the design of a feedback control law for control systems described by a class of nonlinear differential-algebraic equations so that certain desired outputs track given reference inputs. The nonlinear differential-algebraic control system being considered is not in state variable form. Assumptions are introduced and a procedure is developed such that an equivalent state rea...

The design and implementation of Fuzzy Policy Gradient Learning (FPGL) method for humanoid robot is proposed in this paper. This paper not only introduces the phases of the humanoid robot walking, but also improves and parameterizes the gait pattern of the robot. FPGL is an integrated machine learning method based on Policy Gradient Reinforcement Learning (PGRL) and fuzzy logic concept in order...

Our goal is to exploit the benefits of multi-agent systems so as to gain a super-linear increase in performance relative to that of a single robot. By this we mean that a team of n robots either performs a task more than n times “better” (depending on the task, faster, more thoroughly, more reliably) than a single robot could perform the task, or performs a task that a single robot simply canno...

We present a navigation system using multiple sensors for unknown and dynamic indoor environments. To achieve the robustness and flexibility of the mobile robot, we propose a new behavior-based architecture with three groups of clustered (reflexive, purposive, and adaptive) agents that realizes both efficiency in attaining the mission of the robot and robustness against the various kinds or fai...

Component-based software is a major recent design trend in robotics. It brings many benefits to system design, implementation, maintenance and architectural flexibility. While previous methods of structuring software led to monolithic robot software incapable of easily using multiple architectures, the component-based approach, combined with some suitable software engineering decisions, opens n...

Among control problems for mobile robots, point-to-point stabilization is the most challenging since it does not admit designs with smooth static state feedback laws. Stabilization strategies for mobile robots, and nonholonomic systems generally, are smooth, time-varying or nonsmooth, time-invariant. Time-varying control strategies are designed with umdamped linear oscillators but their fixed s...

The ability to detect people in domestic and unconstrained environments is crucial for every service robot. The knowledge where people are is required to perform several tasks such as navigation with dynamic obstacle avoidance and human-robot-interaction. In this paper we propose a people detection approach based on 3d data provided by a RGB-D camera. We introduce a novel 3d feature descriptor ...

In our experience, a robot designer, behavior architect, and animator must work closely together to create an interactive robot with expressive, dynamic behavior. This paper describes lessons learned from these collaborations, as well as a set of tools and techniques developed to help facilitate the collaboration. The guiding principles of these tools and techniques are to allow each collaborat...

Soft robot arms possess unique capabilities when it comes to adaptability, flexibility, and dexterity. In addition, soft systems that are pneumatically actuated can claim high power-to-weight ratio. One of the main drawbacks of pneumatically actuated soft arms is that their stiffness cannot be varied independently from their end-effector position in space. The novel robot arm physical design pr...