The common misconception regarding robots is that, they are used for industrial purpose only. But it is not so, they find applications in different fields, ranging from simple household chores to space explorations. There are different ways to control these robots, but imagine the case of controlling a robot miles and miles away through the internet. This paper describes the use of internet to ...

Flexible robots have given rise to numerous investigations, and their use is easily justified in two main cases: (1) when the weight of the robot has to be minimized and (2) when collisions of the robot with the environment are foreseen, as a flexible lightweight robot delivers less impact energy. Much work has been done by different authors on the position control of flexible robots using feed...

WINTER 2015 23 As robotics moved from industrial to service applications, engineers began looking for new tasks that could be automated with robots. Industrial tasks had been a perfect candidate for automation since they are physically exhausting and require high precision. Motor rehabilitation seemed like a similarly appropriate robotics application. In the course of rehabilitation, the patien...

Research in humanlike robotic arms will not only provide insight in how to make more realistic looking and behaving robots, but can also provide insight into the way that humans control their muscles. This information can then be applied in rehabilitation projects or in the development of prosthetics. Most current robots have joint-based actuators, instead of more humanlike systems with artific...

The increasing demand for physical interaction between humans and robots has led to the development of robots that guarantee safe behavior when human contact occurs. However, attaining established levels of performance while ensuring safety poses formidable challenges in mechanical design, actuation, sensing and control. To achieve safety without compromising performance, the human-friendly rob...

Wheeled mobile manipulators utilize both the locomotion capabilities of the wheeled platform and manipulation capacity of the arm. While the modelling and control of such systems have previously been studied, most of them have considered robots with rigid suspension and their wheels are subject to pure rolling conditions. To relax the aforementioned limiting assumptions, this research addresses...

The paper considers a technique for computation of the inverse kinematic model of the human arm for robot based rehabilitation that uses measurements of the hand position and orientation and radial acceleration of the upper arm. Analytical analysis and empirical validation of the method are presented. The algorithm enables estimation of human arm angles, which can be used in trajectory planning...

This paper describes the first prototype of a “Programming by demonstration” (PbD) system for position teaching of a robot manipulator. A new approach for enabling PbD using supervised learning is presented, by connecting a wearable input device for sensing human arm movements to the software controller of a robot arm. The method does not require analytical modelling of either the human arm or ...

The purpose of the senior design project, from the course description of objectives is "To provide students a complete design experience, including the necessity to set design goals and objectives, integrate knowledge, exercise engineering judgment, plan to meet a budget and schedule, to work as a team member, and to communicate in writing." To accomplish these objectives our group, Helping Han...