# IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters

## Issue 99

Early Access articles are new content made available in advance of the final electronic or print versions and result from IEEE's Preprint or Rapid Post processes. Preprint articles are peer-reviewed but not fully edited. Rapid Post articles are peer-reviewed and edited but not paginated. Both these types of Early Access articles are fully citable from the moment they appear in IEEE Xplore.

## Filter Results

Displaying Results 1 - 25 of 33
• ### Operator awareness in human-robot collaboration through wearable vibrotactile feedback

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (671 KB)

In industrial scenarios requiring human-robot collaboration, the understanding between the human operator and his/her robot co-worker is paramount. On one side the robot has to detect human intentions, and on the other side the human needs to be aware of what is happening during the collaborative task. In this paper, we address the first issue by predicting human behaviour through a new recursive ... View full abstract»

• ### Design of a Portable Pneumatic Power Source with High Output Pressure for Wearable Robotic Applications

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (1166 KB)

Despite the rapid advances in soft robotic actuation technologies, the main energy source that empowers most wearable systems remains the conventional tethered stationary air compressor that greatly limits these systems' applicability. Several portable pneumatic energy sources have been introduced; however, the limited maximum output pressure and flow rate, size and weight, large operational noise... View full abstract»

• ### Development and Testing of Force-Sensing Forceps using FBG for Bilateral Micro-Operation System

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (1255 KB)

Regarding the bilateral micro-operation system, lowering the intervening inertia is important because it can disturb the operators' sense of micro forces applied to the manipulator. Reducing intervening inertia, the precise force sensing system is necessary. The force sensing system needs to be unaffected by machine vibration during robot motion because it is difficult to improve force control gai... View full abstract»

• ### A Wearable 3-Axis Tactile Sensor for Human Fingertips

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (4880 KB)

Human training data can scaffold robot imitation learning. However, most datagloves only record joint angles, but for many tasks, force control is more important. They also cover the human skin, thereby making a natural interaction of the human with the object impossible. The current paper suggests a wearable sensor that can measure the 3-axis force vector exerted at the fingertip by the finger, w... View full abstract»

• ### Adaptive Path Following of Underactuated Snake Robot on Unknown and Varied Frictions Ground: Theory and Validations

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (2965 KB)

This paper investigates the straight path following problem for a class of underactuated bio-inspired snake robots on ground with unknown and varied friction coefficients. Existing works usually design control input requiring the exact values of these friction coefficients, which however rely on the specific operating terrain and may not always be known a priori. By virtue of backstepping techniqu... View full abstract»

• ### Longitudinal rollover strategy as effective intervention to reduce wrist injuries during forward fall

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (540 KB)

Strategies for reducing fall-related injuries have been assessed through biomechanical studies and employed in robotics. A better understanding of the mechanism of such fall arresting methods can help fall prevention programs to reduce injuries and help robots to prevent damage to themselves. Rollover about the longitudinal axis is an effective strategy to reduce the impact force experienced by th... View full abstract»

• ### Scene Modeling and Augmented Virtuality Interface for Telerobotic Satellite Servicing

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (1575 KB) |  Media

Teleoperation in extreme environments can be hindered by limitations in telemetry and in operator perception of the remote environment. Often, the primary mode of perception is visual feedback from remote cameras, which do not always provide suitable views and are subject to telemetry delays. To address these challenges, we propose to build a model of the remote environment and provide an augmente... View full abstract»

• ### ErgoTac: A Tactile Feedback Interface for Improving Human Ergonomics in Workplaces

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (1579 KB)

In this work, we present a novel wearable feedback interface with the aim to improve human ergonomics in the execution of heavy or repetitive industrial tasks. The proposed interface incorporates a reduced-complexity and real-time model for the estimation of human joints' load variations, based on the estimated translational displacement of the centre of pressure (CoP) in the presence of external ... View full abstract»

• ### Soft Wearable Augmented Walking Suit with Pneumatic Gel Muscles and Stance Phase Detection System to Assist Gait

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (3252 KB) |  Media

The lower limbs of the human body are responsible for human locomotion and maintaining a good quality of life. However, there are many instances of muscle fatigue or injuries caused by stressful work environments, aging, and work that involves walking a long distance. Therefore, there is a need for an assistive suit for walking that can unload muscle efforts during walking and reduce the chances o... View full abstract»

• ### Analytical and Experimental Analysis for Position Optimization of a Grasp Assistance Supernumerary Robotic Hand

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (4108 KB)

The reduction of muscular strength in elderly people and patients with neurological movement disorders drastically reduces the hand autonomy for performing several daily activities. This work presents preliminary results towards a novel supernumerary hand system, i.e. the SoftHand X, that aims to augment the grasping capabilities of people with re- duced hand functionalities. The system consists o... View full abstract»

• ### Haptic-based Shared-Control Methods for a Dual-Arm System

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (930 KB)

We propose a novel haptic guidance method for a telerobotic manipulation system, which is able to deal with several different system's constraints, such as collisions, joint limits, and singularities. In addition, we combine the haptic guidance with a shared-control algorithm for autonomous orientation control meant to further simplify the execution of grasping tasks. The stability of the overall ... View full abstract»

• ### Combining wearable finger haptics and Augmented Reality: User evaluation using an external camera and the Microsoft HoloLens

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (3098 KB) |  Media

Augmented Reality (AR) enriches our physical world with digital content and media, such as 3D models and videos, overlaying in real-time the camera view of our smartphone, tablet, laptop, or glasses. Despite the recent massive interest for this technology, it is still not possible to receive rich haptic feedback when interacting with augmented environments. This lack is mainly due to the poor diff... View full abstract»

• ### Human Intention Detection as a Multiclass Classification Problem: Application in Human-Robot Physical Interaction while Walking

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (4030 KB) |  Media

In many physical human-robot interaction scenarios, for successful completion of the tasks, robots should be able to recognize the human partner's intention. One of such scenarios that is studied in this paper is the collaborative task of carrying an object by a human-humanoid pair in which the humanoid should be able to interpret the human partner's intentions (e.g., start/stop walking, accelerat... View full abstract»

• ### An Adaptive Sampling Approach for Evaluating Robot Self-Righting Capabilities

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (1357 KB)

To properly evaluate the ability of robots to operate autonomously in the real world, it is necessary to develop methods for quantifying their self-righting capabilities. Here we improve upon a sampling-based framework for evaluating self-righting capabilities that was previously validated in two-dimensions. To apply this framework to realistic robots in three-dimensions, we require algorithms cap... View full abstract»

• ### Delay Compensation for a Telepresence System with 3D 360 Degree Vision based on Deep Head Motion Prediction and Dynamic FoV Adaptation

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (5702 KB)

The usability of telepresence applications is strongly affected by the communication delay between the user and the remote system. Special attention needs to be paid in case the distant scene is experienced by means of a Head Mounted Display (HMD). A high motion-to-photon (M2P) latency, which describes the time needed to fully reflect the user's motion on the display, results in a poor feeling of ... View full abstract»

• ### Comfort-Centered Design of a Lightweight and Backdrivable Knee Exoskeleton

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (1083 KB)

This paper presents design principles for comfort-centered wearable robots and their application in a lightweight and backdrivable knee exoskeleton. The mitigation of discomfort is treated as electromechanical design and control issues and three solutions are proposed in this paper: 1) a new wearable structure optimizes the strap attachment configuration and suit layout to ameliorate excessive she... View full abstract»

• ### Bioinspired Flapping-Wing Robot with Direct-Driven Piezoelectric Actuation and its Takeoff Demonstration

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (850 KB) |  Media

We present the design and performance of a prototype bioinspired flapping-wing micro aerial vehicle with piezoelectric direct-driven actuation. This type of actuation is superior in terms of structural simplicity because it does not include any transmission mechanism. Instead, a unimorph piezoelectric actuator directly drives the wing. We designed and fabricated a two-wing prototype with a wingspa... View full abstract»

• ### A Compliant Robotic Instrument with Coupled Tendon Driven Articulated Wrist Control for Organ Retraction

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (1277 KB)

Organ retraction is a common and important task in minimally invasive surgery. It is a surgical technique to push aside or manipulate tissues/organs to improve the access and visualization of the surgical sites. Typical manual retractors are rigid and without any articulation. Physicians often struggle with minimizing the force applying onto the tissue while positioning the retractor to maintain o... View full abstract»

• ### Online robust endomicroscopy video mosaicking using robot prior

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (5015 KB) |  Media

This paper discusses the development of a mosaicking algorithm for building large and high resolution confocal images. Due to the nature of optics and vision systems in general, there is still a dilemma between choosing a wide field-of-view (FOV) and high-resolution. The most accepted solution is to opt for a high-resolution optics and expand the FOV algorithmically thanks to mosaicking approaches... View full abstract»

• ### A Robust Data-Driven Approach for Online Learning and Manipulation of Unmodeled 3-D Heterogeneous Compliant Objects

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (3674 KB) |  Media

We present a generic data-driven method to address the problem of manipulating a 3-D compliant object (CO) with heterogeneous physical properties in the presence of unknown disturbances. In this study, we do not assume a prior knowledge about the deformation behavior of the CO and type of the disturbance (e.g. internal or external). We also do not impose any constraints on the CO's physical proper... View full abstract»

• ### HoloNeedle: Augmented-reality Guidance System for Needle Placement Investigating the Advantages of 3D Needle Shape Reconstruction

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (3762 KB) |  Media

Augmented-reality (AR) systems have been proposed for medical needle procedures as alternatives to restore the physician's natural perspective and head motion parallax that are lost when using standard imaging methods. AR systems have assumed a rigid needle, but in practice, a needle can experience large deflections which lead to significant errors. We combine an instrumented needle that measures ... View full abstract»

• ### A Magnetic Manipulator Cooled With Liquid Nitrogen

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (2301 KB) |  Media

Miniature robots manipulated by external magnetic fields could enable less invasive surgeries. Magnetic tools, capsules, or medication can be controlled inside a human body using electromagnets. However, resistive magnetic devices able to produce strong magnetic fields in a large volume inefficiently use space and energy. This paper presents the design and testing of a magnetic manipulator cooled ... View full abstract»

• ### Slip Sensing for Intelligent, Improved Grasping and Retraction in Robot-Assisted Surgery

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (3365 KB)

Grasping and manipulation of biological tissue are crucial processes during Robot-Assisted Surgery (RAS). An intelligent system that aids surgeons in maintaining a reliable, atraumatic grasp on tissue would allow them to focus on the clinical task and potentially improve safety and performance. To this end, we investigate slip detection of grasped tissue. Because tissue is moist, conformable, and ... View full abstract»

• ### Spatio-Temporally Smooth Local Mapping and State Estimation inside Generalized Cylinders with Micro Aerial Vehicles

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (4431 KB)

In this paper, we consider state estimation and local mapping with a Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) inside a tunnel that can be modeled as a generalized cylinder, using a 3D lidar and an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). This axisymmetric environment poses unique challenges in terms of localization and mapping. The point cloud data returned by the sensor consists of indiscriminate partial cylindrical p... View full abstract»

• ### Action Anticipation: Reading the Intentions of Humans and Robots

Publication Year: 2018, Page(s): 1
| | PDF (1592 KB) |  Media

Humans have the fascinating capacity of processing non-verbal visual cues to understand and anticipate the actions of other humans. This "intention reading" ability is underpinned by shared motor-repertoire and action-models, which we use to interpret the intentions of others as if they were our own. We investigate how the different cues contribute to the legibility of human actions during interpe... View full abstract»

## Aims & Scope

The IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) publishes peer-reviewed articles that provide a timely and concise account of innovative research ideas and application results, reporting significant theoretical findings and application case studies in areas of robotics and automation.

Full Aims & Scope

## Meet Our Editors

#### Editor-in-Chief

Allison Okamura
Department: Mechanical Engineering
Stanford University
Stanford,  California  USA 94305-4021