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Hybrid rehabilitation robotics combine neuro-prosthetic devices (close-loop functional electrical stimulation systems) and traditional robotic structures and actuators to explore better therapies and promote a more efficient motor function recovery or compensation. Although hybrid robotics and ankle neuroprostheses (NPs) have been widely developed over the last years, there are just few studies on...
We report on a novel low-computation object grasping method that can classify complex objects into primitive shapes and then select the object grasping posture based on predefined grasping postures associated with the approximated primitive shapes. In this approach, the object is not precisely modeled, and the grasping posture is selected from a small number of candidates without massive search; thus,...
This paper proposes a novel soft robotic design that possesses variable stiffness and position feedback. A gripper adopting this design is presented. Each finger in the gripper is based on a 3D printed substrate (driven by an air actuated soft actuator) composed of two smart materials: shape memory polymer (SMP) and conductive thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). SMP's dramatic change of elastic modulus...
Marine robotics is a rapidly growing field, with applications of both Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) and Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV) becoming extensive and within reach for many people. Presented is a low-cost design for an ASV, focusing on the ability for the average person with only little mechanical and electrical skills to assemble. The ASV also incorporates a winch into its design,...
In this paper, we describe an original multi-functional UWB software-defined radar system's application to dead-reckoning navigation in indoor scenarios. The radar is the only sensor available and no other navigational aids are present, except simple targets of opportunity (TOP), which are then used as references. This work provides the experimental primer on using software-defined sensors for navigational...
In this paper, a fully-autonomous quadrotor aerial robot for solving the different missions proposed in the 2016 International Micro Air Vehicle (IMAV) Indoor Competition is presented. The missions proposed in the IMAV 2016 competition involve the execution of high-level missions such as entering and exiting a building, exploring an unknown indoor environment, recognizing and interacting with objects,...
Although flapping-wing micro aerial vehicles have become a hot topic in academia, the knowledge we have of these systems, their force generation mechanisms and dynamics is still limited. Recent technological advances have allowed for the development of free flight test setups using on-board sensors and external tracking systems, for system identification purposes. Nevertheless, there is still little...
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) exhibit great agility and usually require a trained pilot to operate them, while being restricted to line-of-sight range. This prevents their wide introduction in applications such as inspection for disaster scenarios. Our goal is to enable rescue teams untrained in piloting to teleoperate a UAV as an aid to their mission, while being able to focus on the task at hand...
We propose an event-triggered control policy for a discrete-time linear system with unreliable actuators' and sensors' links, captured by Bernoulli packet dropout models. The proposed policy is a threshold-based policy by which transmissions occur if a weighted norm of an error state vector exceeds a threshold. The threshold and the weights of the norm depend on the underlying characteristics of the...
This paper presents the design and experimental evaluation of the end-effector of a dexterous encounter type haptic interface aimed at allowing natural interactions with digital mockups in Virtual Reality. This end-effector has two purposes: first, it should be able to precisely measure the 6D position and orientation of a fingertip remotely without equipping the user with any marker on the skin or...
Model based approaches, such as those that use partial differential equations (PDE), lend themselves to gas distribution mapping and gas source localization. Moreover, they also permit constructing intelligent sampling strategies. However, a realistic mathematical model of gas dispersion is complex and computationally expensive to solve. This is especially the case for inverse problems, where sources...
Grasping an object in the presence of unpredictable disturbances and with no previous knowledge of the geometry and mass distribution of it represents a significant challenge in Robotics. Also, grasping an object with sufficient force to prevent slippage, whilst not damaging or deforming the shape of the object proves to be still an intricate challenge despite the existence of a huge body of literature...
The use of magnetic resonance (MR) images for needle-based interventions offers several advantages over other types of imaging modalities (e.g., high tissue contrast and no radiation). However, MR-guided interventions face challenges related to electromagnetic compatibility of medical devices and real-time tracking of surgical instruments. This work presents a flexible needle steering system that...
Most of the wearable robots today assist their users by acting in parallel or in series to their natural limbs. We propose a different approach to wearable robotics, consisting of devices that provide users with additional, independent robotic limbs. We present a wearable robot prototype that can achieve these goals with an extremely light weight apparatus. In order to control additional robotic limbs...
Crop grow measurement technologies are important to increase the farm productivity. Detection and measurement of fruit volume are useful for forecasting and harvesting applications. Some environmental challenges such as lighting conditions or occlusions make the fruit detection difficult. Our approach is based on features extraction from images through a sub-image clustering technique. Then images...
In this paper we present a novel joint approach for optimising surface curvature and pose alignment. We present two implementations of this joint optimisation strategy, including a fast implementation that uses two frames and an offline multi-frame approach. We demonstrate an order of magnitude improvement in simulation over state of the art dense relative point-to-plane Iterative Closest Point (ICP)...
Scene understanding is a crucial requirement for robot navigation. Conditional Random Fields (CRF) are commonly used to solve the scene labelling problem since they represent contextual information efficiently and provide efficient inference methods. However, when a robot navigates through an unknown environment, it is often necessary to adjust the parameters of the CRF online to maintain the same...
The rapid advancement of robotics poses the problem of a deep integration of robotic systems in human environments. In order to achieve this symbiosis between humans and robots, the artificial systems have to take into account one of the most important aspects in human life: emotions. The recognition and understanding of human emotions is crucial for robotic systems to behave in appropriate ways according...
This paper presents the pedagogy of mechatronics in the mechanical engineering senior capstone design classes at the University of California Los Angeles during 2011–2016. Students entering the class with little hands-on experience in mechatronics are given lectures and hands-on laboratory tutorials and practice to conceptualize, design, and realize mechatronic systems. Students are then provided...
The problem of searching for hidden or lost objects (called targets) by autonomous smart robots in an unknown environment arises in many applications, e.g., searching for and rescuing lost people during incidents in high-rise buildings, searching for fire sources and hazardous materials, searching for safe paths through the rubble during an emergency evacuation etc. Until the target is found, it may...
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