The RoboCup Rescue competition aims at boosting research in robots and infrastructure able to help in real rescue missions. The task is to find and report victims in areas of different grades of roughness, which are currently indoor. It challenges to some extreme the mobility of robot platforms as well as the autonomy of their control and sensor interpretation software. In the 2004 competition,...

Presents an approach to improved performance and flexibility in industrial robotics by means of sensor integration and feedback control in task-level programming and task execution. Also presents feasibility studies in support of the ideas. Discusses some solutions to the problem using six degrees of freedom force control together with the ABB S4CPlus system as an illustrative example. Consider...

Three-axis-magnetometers (TAMs) are widely utilized as a key component of attitude determination subsystems and as such are considered the corner stone of navigation for low Earth orbiting (LEO) space systems. Precise geomagnetic-based navigation demands accurate calibration of the magnetometers. In this regard, a complete online calibration process of TAM is developed in the current research t...

Rockfall protection barriers are connected to the ground using steel cables fixed with anchors and foundations for the steel posts. It is common practice to measure the forces in the cables, while to date measurements of forces in the foundations have been inadequately resolved. An overview is presented of existing methods to measure the loads on the post foundations of rockfall protection barr...

In haptic-feedback teleoperation, the operator experiences forces and torques applied to the slave manipulator. These forces, however, consist of two components: on the one hand, forces and torques due to environmental contact, and on the other hand, non-contact forces, i.e., inertial forces, centrifugal forces, Coriolis forces, and associated torques. For several reasons, eliminating these non...

This paper presents the design and realization of a multifunctional bandpass-filter/displacement-sensor using an edge-coupled microstrip bandpass filter loaded by pair split ring resonators (SRRs). It is shown that while structure acts as at its operating frequency, phase reflection coefficient from movable loading resonator resonance frequency can be used for displacement sensing. With this ai...