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Magnethoreological-fluid (MR-fluid) actuators are consider as as suitable instruments in rehabilitation trainings so that they are passive actuators. Passive actuators will not generate force by themselves. Only when external force acts on them, they generate reaction force. Considering these properties, passive actuators are stable actuators and appropriate for the human society because they would...
Most of today's robots have rigid structures and actuators requiring complex software control algorithms and sophisticated sensor systems in order to behave in a compliant and safe way adapted to contact with unknown environments and humans. By studying and constructing variable impedance actuators and their control, we contribute to the development of actuation units which can match the intrinsic...
The number of elderly population is increasing worldwide and often they need assistance in their daily activities. In many situations, these elders are placed in elderly care facilities in order to receive continuous assistance from the human caregivers. The caregivers usually keep a watchful eye on the elders and help them in their activities of daily living. However, study shows that the human caregivers...
This paper presents a novel method to characterize mechanical impedance of a human joint. We employed a non-parametric stochastic identification method and an interactive robot. This method allows us to determine several important properties including a) joint impedance in the direction of the joint principal axes, b) the spatial joint impedance structure, and c) the passivity properties of the joint...
Robots for real world applications face multiple challenges due to the dynamic nature of the environment. These challenges require that robotic architectures can handle multiple goals, some of which may be conflicting, and can also handle time-constraints for completion of those goals. In addition, the architectures need to be flexible enough to change their priorities should a change in the environment...
Recently, walking assistance robots are receiving a great attention according to the increase of elderly population. Such systems are required to generate precise and large assistive torques to effectively assist human motions. Moreover, the assistive robots should be light and compact for the comfort and safety issues. In this paper we designed full lower extremity assistive robot with compact rotary...
A cable-driven actuating system is proposed in this paper. The proposed system is attractive for rehabilitation systems because the weight of the actuator is not imposed on the human body. Since the end-effector and the actuators are connected by Bowden cables, the humans are allowed to freely move in a certain range while being assisted. However, it is a challenge to account for the variable friction...
This paper presents an Active Variable Stiffness Differential Elastic Actuator (ADEA) which is designed and application for robotic systems and more generally for machines that are designed to interact with people and environments under safety constraints. The ADEA consists of two DC-motors to drive two antagonistic warm gears independently. By changing the synchronisation and differentiation of angle...
This paper presents a novel variable impedance compact compliant series elastic actuator (SEA) design for human-friendly robotics applications. The actuator design consists of a servomotor, a ball screw, a torsional spring connecting the motor and the ball screw via a pair of spur gear, and a set of translational springs connecting the ball screw nut to the output link. The translational springs with...
The goal of this research is to develop a face robot with a new facial expression mechanism using a small number of actuators. Many designs of face robots have been investigated and published in the past. Most face robots can generate a variety of expressions by moving a large number of control points underneath the artificial skin. The number of control points is usually larger than 10, and each...
The aim of this project is to interface the human arm with a machine wirelessly and that machine in turn will mimic the motions of the human arm as accurately as possible. The idea for this prototype was got from NASA's ROBONAUT which is a highly dexterous robot being used on the International Space Station [5], [6]. Human Machine Interface used for robots is usually done using a joystick or a master...
Muscle co-contraction can be modeled as an active modulation of the passive musculo-skeletal compliance. Within this context, recent findings in human motor control have shown that active compliance modulation is fundamental when planning movements in presence of unpredictability and uncertainties. Along this line of research, this paper investigates the link between active impedance control and unpredictability,...
Focusing on the physical interaction between people and machines within safety constraints in versatile situations, this paper proposes a new, efficient actuation approach, continuous-state coupled elastic actuation (CCEA), to provide oncoming human-machine systems with an intrinsic programmable stiffness capacity to shape output force corresponding to the deviation between human motions and set positions...
There are many applications for which a patient needs functional compensation due to motor disorders in daily activities. Classic research has focused on robotics solutions in terms of actuators or motors, but the point of this paper is to analyze new solutions combining both biological and artificial structures, in order to improve standard developments. Nowadays wearable Robots are taking an important...
Robot assisted motion therapy attains increasingly importance and acceptance especially in neurorehabilitation after stroke or spinal injury, but also in orthopedic rehabilitation and surgical interventions. Several studies have shown that a patient-cooperative (assistive) motion therapy, which activates remaining muscle strength and so optimizes recovery, will cause a much higher effectiveness compared...
In humanoid robotics, there is a long pursuit of making biped robots capable of walking in highly unstructured and roughly sensed environments. Within this goal, our objective is to develop a compliant bipedal humanoid robot that can move in these terrains as well as quickly adapt to unpredicted variations on the contact state. We present here the first part of our work, focusing on the design, construction...
Shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators are compact and have high force-to-weight ratios, making them strong candidates to actuate robots, exoskeletons, and prosthetics. To optimize speed and energy consumption, SMA actuators have been embedded in an N×N vascular network that can deliver electric and thermofluidic energy to the each actuator. The scalable architecture of the vascular network allows for...
The PERCRO laboratory of Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna has recently completed the development and functional assessment of the Body Extender (BE) system, an advanced wearable robot expressly conceived for augmenting the human strength for handling of heavy materials in unstructured environment. The system is composed by four robotic limbs with anthropomorphic kinematics and has a total of 22 independently...
We present a novel method for designing controllers for robots with variable impedance actuators. We take an imitation learning approach, whereby we learn impedance modulation strategies from observations of behaviour (for example, that of humans) and transfer these to a robotic plant with very different actuators and dynamics. In contrast to previous approaches where impedance characteristics are...
Considering the human-robot symbiosis in coming years, robots should be able to read human intention for natural and rational interaction with human beings. This paper proposes effective human-robot interaction (HRI) by reading the human intention using cognitive architecture. Proposed intention reading algorithm is inspired by mirror-neuron system and simulation theory which are the significant parts...
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