Assistive robot systems require a robot to interact closely with people and to perform joint human-robot tasks. Interaction with humans comes with additional challenges to those in other real-world scenarios. Robot plans must be especially flexible and take into account human abilities and preferences. For providing this level of flexibility, we propose a framework for transformational reactive...

In this paper we examine the practical use of hardware neural networks in an autonomous mobile robot. We have developed a hardware neural system based around a custom VLSI chip, EPSILON III, designed specifically for embedded hardware neural applications. We present here a demonstration application of an autonomous mobile robot that highlights the flexibility of this system. This robot gains ba...

Distribution of functionality among nodes is a contemporary research issue for embedded systems, e.g. in the field of autonomous mobile robot groups. In such groups, the concept of distribution is mainly used to achieve flexibility and robustness that could not be reached by a single robot. Here it will be used as a design-paradigm for a robot’s internal architecture. In this paper, a hierarchi...

The distributed control of multi-robot systems has been shown to have advantages over conventional single robot systems. These include scalability, flexibility and robustness to failures. This paper considers pattern formation and reconfigurability in a multi-robot system using bifurcating potential fields. It is shown how various patterns can be achieved through a simple free parameter change....

This paper describes the new features included in the Robolab 2 System, which permits the students to work with a simulation of and industrial robot and carry out operations with the real robot through teleoperation. Among these features, the flexibility of managing different robots or including new robot models and the very friendly user interface are highlighted. Some aspects about how Robola...

To allow a robot to function in unstructured environments, a control architecture should be flexible and should facilitate the creation and representation of arbitrarily complex sequences of actions. Such an architecture should also facilitate simple and natural interaction between a robot and its human collaborators. Human language has both representational flexibility and naturalness to human...

Hybrid position/force control enables a robot to apply specified forces to a constraint while moving along a prescribed path. Flexibility of the motor transmissions (joint flexibility) is a major concern in the design of hybrid controls, particularly with regard to system stability. While much work on hybrid control has been toward the development of advanced schemes specifically for flexible-j...

β-lactamases are bacterial enzymes that confer resistance to β-lactam antibiotics, such as penicillins and cephalosporins. There are four classes of β-lactamase enzymes, each with characteristic sequence and structure properties. Enzymes from class A are the most common and have been well characterized across the family; however, less is known about how physicochemical properties vary across th...

As the requirements for robot performance increase, the dynamics of the manipulator become more dominated by flexibility. These flexible effects generate model uncertainty which reduces the end-point positioning accuracy of the manipulator. Residual vibration or tip deflection due to uncertain payloads may contribute to the error in tip position. This paper addresses several control strategies ...

We reinterprete and improve recent results on robust control of robots by the computed method. The methods and ideas used are inspired by 'passivity based' control methods for robot manipulators and lead to a significant increase in freedom of controller implementation, thereby providing more flexibility to the designer of robot control systems.