Elastic robot joints gain in importance since the nowadays robotics tends to the lightweight structures. The lightweight metals and composite materials deployed not only in the links but also in the joint assemblies affect the overall stiffness of robotic system. The elastic joints provide the loaded robot motion with additional compliance and can lead to significant control errors and vibratio...

[Purpose] This study examined the effects of the application of elastic taping over the ankle joints of healthy subjects on their gait, balance ability, and muscle strength. [Subjects] Fifty healthy subjects with no orthopedic history of the ankle joint were selected and elastic taping was applied to their ankle joints. [Methods] Before and after application of the elastic taping, gait and bala...

In the present study, small scale effect on critical buckling loads of triangular nano- composite plates under uniform in-plane compression is studied. Since at nano-scale the structure of the plate is discrete, the size dependent nonlocal elasticity theory is employed to develop an equivalent continuum plate model for this nanostructure incorporating the changes in its mechanical behavior. The...

The storage and recovery of elastic strain energy in muscles and tendons increases the economy of locomotion in running vertebrates. In this investigation, we compared the negative and positive external work produced at individual limb joints of running dogs to evaluate which muscle-tendon systems contribute to elastic storage and to determine the extent to which the external work of locomotion...

For the present paper, we developed an output feedback chattering position regulator for n-degreesof-freedom (DOF) robot manipulators with elastic and frictional joints. A stability analysis of the closed-loop dynamic system in question was developed within the framework of Lyapunov functions. Performance issues related to the chattering regulator are illustrated in numerical simulations and ex...