This paper presents a novel compact design for a two degrees of freedom (DOF) joint mechanism. The joint is optimized for compactness, strength and range of motion which makes it ideal for constructing spatial or three-dimensional hyper redundant robots. We also identify and classify various prior joint designs that led to the development of this new concept. Finally, we present the joint forwa...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v 1 . INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 . PROBLEM STATEMENT AND SYSTEM DESCRIPTION . . . . 3 2.1 SYSTEM VARIABLES AND COORDINATE FRAMES . . . . 3 2.2 KINEMATIC MANIPULATOR MODEL . . . . . . . . . 3 2.3 DYNAMIC MANIPULATOR MODEL . . . . . . . . . 5 3 . RESOLUTION OF KINEMATIC REDUNDANCY . . . . . . . 7 3.1 SELECTION OF E AND k . . . . . . . . . ...

In this paper we shall present the progress of the ROBOCOQ project. This project aims to design a prototype of autonomous biped based on the avian model, capable of exploring cluttered environments. This design relies on experimental kinematics data obtained from the quail. The experimental protocol used to reconstruct a 3D model is presented in this paper as well as the procedure and criteria ...

The halteres of flies are mechanosensory organs that provide information about body rotations during flight. We measured haltere movements in a range of fly taxa during free walking and tethered flight. We find a diversity of wing-haltere phase relationships in flight, with higher variability in more ancient families and less in more derived families. Diverse haltere movements were observed dur...

We present a composite material with embedded sensing and actuation that can perform permanent shape changes by temporarily varying its stiffness and applying an external moment. Varying stiffness is a complementary approach to actuator-chain based approaches that can be accomplished using a large variety of means ranging from heat, electric field or vacuum. A polycaprolactone (PCL) bar provide...

When creating datasets for modelling of human grasping and manipulation skills based on training examples from human motion one can encounter the problem that the kinematics of the robot does not match the human kinematics. We present a simple method of bypassing the explicit modelling of the human kinematics.

Kinematics are widely used as input parameters for computational modeling. When using image registration to acquire kinematics, from MRI for instance, initial conditions from manual registration may potentially influence accuracy. We investigated the effects of different initial conditions on radius and lunate kinematics obtained from image registration. Registration accuracy was expected to de...