IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics

This paper presents a semiactive shock absorber system, which utilizes the special properties of electrorheological (ER) valves and which is intended to protect sensitive equipment on ships or submarines. It consists of a platform and a base plate, which are connected via an ER damper and an air spring. The resulting acceleration of the platform upon an external shock of the base plate should be s... View full abstract»

This paper describes the developed three-phase 6/8 poles switched reluctance external rotor motor drive for a fan in air conditioner. The external rotor core structure and the internal stator core structure, the three-phase windings arrangement, the slotted claw, and the setting structure of the photoelectric transducers on the rotor position detector are illustrated. The electromagnetic field cal... View full abstract»

In this paper, a general skeleton on modeling, controller design, and applications of the piezoelectric positioning stages is presented. Toward this framework, a general model is first proposed to characterize dynamic behaviors of the stage, including frequency response of the stage, voltage-charge hysteresis and nonlinear electric behavior. To illustrate the validity of the proposed general model... View full abstract»

Recently, model-based visual-tracking techniques have been developed for measuring physiological motion in robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery. However, the tracking of living tissue surfaces in 3-D space is very challenging. Linear models are difficult to fit complex tissue dynamics, while current nonlinear models generally suffer from complex implementation and excessive computational burd... View full abstract»

This paper presents the complete development and analysis of a soft robotic platform that exhibits peristaltic locomotion. The design principle is based on the antagonistic arrangement of circular and longitudinal muscle groups of Oligochaetes. Sequential antagonistic motion is achieved in a flexible braided mesh-tube structure using a nickel titanium (NiTi) coil actuators wrapped in a spiral patt... View full abstract»

Piezomicropositioning actuators, which are widely used in micropositioning applications, exhibit strong rate-dependent hysteresis nonlinearities that affect the accuracy of these micropositioning systems when used in open-loop control systems, and may also even lead to system instability of closed-loop control systems. Feedback control techniques could compensate for the rate-dependent hysteresis ... View full abstract»

Although pneumatic actuators have been widely used in industry and other application areas, its weakness in low-energy efficiency is well known. Aiming for energy efficiency improvement, this paper presents a new hybrid pneumatic system that will recover energy from the exhaust compressed air through a scroll expander. The scroll expander drives a generator to convert the exhaust compressed air en... View full abstract»

A predictive consumption model suitable for industrial type pneumatic production systems is presented in this paper. The model is developed in MATLAB Simulink and interfaced with a programmable logic controller via an OPC server. Theoretical model development and validation are discussed with particular emphasis on applicability to industrial systems. Currently, consumers such as linear cylinders,... View full abstract»

This paper investigates the analysis and design of a vibration-based energy harvester for rotary motion applications. The energy harvester consists of a cantilever beam with a tip mass and a piezoelectric ceramic attached along the beam that is mounted on a rotating shaft. Using this system, mechanical vibration energy is induced in the flexible beam due to the gravitational force applied to the t... View full abstract»

This paper considers the phenomenon of “pole slipping” in magnetic gears and couplings as a result of torque overload. Specifically, previously reported work on optimized servo speed control and pole-slip detection in magnetic gears is extended through the development of a new control scheme to prevent pole slipping due to combined controller and load torque overload. By utilizing a model predicti... View full abstract»

The problem of self-tuning control of cooperative manipulators forming closed kinematic chain in the presence of inaccurate kinematics model is addressed in this paper. The kinematic parameters pertaining to the relative position/orientation uncertainties of the interconnected manipulators are updated online by two cascaded estimators in order to tune a cooperative controller for achieving accurat... View full abstract»

In this study, the rotational resistance of a spiral-type capsule rotating inside a small intestine is investigated by in vitro experiments and analytical modeling, on which a limited literature is available. The results presented exhibit viscoelastic nature of the intestinal tissue. The significance of various spiral structures and rotating speeds is quantitatively evaluated from the propulsion p... View full abstract»

Noncontact operation of a cycloid motor by means of a magnetic force has been realized. The fabricated motor has a cycloid reduction system with an internal gear as a stator and an external gear as a rotor. A cylindrical permanent magnet encloses the internal gear. The internal gear generates a wobbling motion due to attractive and repulsive magnetic forces produced by external permanent magnets. ... View full abstract»

This study proposes a two-step identification method for estimating the four parameters of a nonlinear model of a position-controlled servomechanism. In the first step, the proposed approach, called the algebraic recursive identification method (ARIM), uses a parametrization derived from the operational calculus currently employed in algebraic identification methods (AIM) recently proposed in the ... View full abstract»

In this paper, we develop a generic approach for modeling a teleoperation setup, as a negative single feedback loop containing a linear time-invariant block and an uncertain time-varying delay. It is not based on specific dynamics of masters and slaves, neither on any control architecture. The main added value of the proposed approach is the possibility of deriving frequency-domain conditions for ... View full abstract»

In this paper, a robust formulation for the structure-control design of mechatronic systems is developed. The proposed robust approach aims at minimization of the sensitivity of the nominal design objectives with respect to uncertain parameters. The robust integrated design problem is established as a nonlinear multiobjective dynamic optimization one, which in order to consider synergetic interact... View full abstract»

Robotic motion planning algorithms used for task automation in robotic surgical systems rely on the availability of accurate models of target soft tissue's deformation. Relying on generic tissue parameters in constructing the tissue deformation models is problematic because biological tissues are known to have very large (inter- and intrasubject) variability. A priori mechanical characterization (... View full abstract»

Single port access surgery (SPAS) presents surgeons with added challenges that require new surgical tools and surgical assistance systems with unique capabilities. To address these challenges, we designed and constructed a new insertable robotic end-effectors platform (IREP) for SPAS. The IREP can be inserted through a Ø15 mm trocar into the abdomen and it uses 21 actuated joints for controlling t... View full abstract»

To effectively improve the stability and dynamic performance of the twisting motion of the magnetically suspended rotor in a control moment gyro, a high-stability and fast-response twisting motion control strategy named as dynamic feedback- feedforward control is proposed in this paper. This method is oriented to the feedforward control strategy and the dynamic feedback signals are employed to det... View full abstract»