IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics

This paper presents a boundary controller for a flexible marine riser to suppress the riser's vibration with a top tension constraint. The flexible marine riser is described by a distributed parameter system with a partial differential equation and four ordinary differential equations. The boundary controller is designed at the top boundary of the riser based on an integral-barrier Lyapunov functi... View full abstract»

This paper presents an experimentally demonstrated gradient-based multirobot technique for adaptively navigating within a parameter field. To implement this technique, simultaneous measurements of the parameter are made at different locations within the field by a spatially controlled cluster of mobile robots. These measurements are shared in order to compute a local gradient of the field. Dependi... View full abstract»

Self-sensing technique consists of using an actuator as a sensor at the same time. This is possible for most actuators with physically reversible principle such as piezoelectric materials. The main advantages of self-sensing are: 1) the embeddability of the measurement technique, and 2) its low cost as no additional sensor is required. This paper presents a self-sensing technique for piezoelectric... View full abstract»

This paper describes the design and implementation of a novel spherical actuator that can generate two tilt-motion degrees of freedom. Voice coil motors were adopted as actuators in a spherical actuator to utilize their simple driving principle and constant torque coefficient characteristic. The sensing and guiding mechanism was built inside the proposed spherical actuator and enabled compactness ... View full abstract»

As the need for autonomous reconnaissance and surveillance missions in cluttered urban environments has been increasing, this paper describes a cooperative path planning algorithm for tracking a moving target in urban environments using both unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs). The novelty of the algorithm is that it takes into account vision occlusions due to obstacle... View full abstract»

A new, seven parameter class of micromanipulators is found with decoupled dynamics. The resonant frequencies and damping ratios are found to be simple functions of the parameters, making it possible to design manipulators to meet resonant frequency or damping ratio specifications. Methods for designing the dynamics so that they are amenable to control are derived, which leads to significant increa... View full abstract»

The design and development of a smart monitoring and controlling system for household electrical appliances in real time has been reported in this paper. The system principally monitors electrical parameters of household appliances such as voltage and current and subsequently calculates the power consumed. The novelty of this system is the implementation of the controlling mechanism of appliances ... View full abstract»

Reduction of contour error, which is defined as the shortest distance between the actual position of the cutting tool and the reference trajectory, is an essential requirement in machining by multiaxis feed drive systems. In addition, because these machines operate all the time in industrial applications all over the world, reduction of the consumed energy in these machines contributes to environm... View full abstract»

One of the main challenges in designing high-power drive systems is the quality of the developed torque. High-torque-ripple magnitudes result in serious vibration and acoustic noise problems that affect the lifetime of a drive train. Multiphase machines intrinsically offer the torque with higher quality and are also being promoted for their high fault tolerant capability when compared with their t... View full abstract»

The development and control of variable stiffness actuators (VSAs) led to the capability of embodying physical principles of safety and energy-efficiency compared to traditional stiff servomotors. However, the output torque range and efficiency of servomotors and VSAs are still insufficient which hinders the development of machines with performances comparable to a human. We have developed a novel... View full abstract»

Energy harvesters based upon resonant mass-spring-damper systems can only generate useful power over a narrow range of excitation frequencies. This is a significant limitation in applications where the vibration source frequency changes over time. In this paper, an active electrical load is presented which can overcome the bandwidth limitations by parametrically tuning the overall harvester system... View full abstract»

This paper explores the possibility of piezoelectric actuators with integrated high-voltage power electronics. Such devices dramatically simplify the application of piezoelectric actuators since the power electronics are already optimized for the voltage range, capacitance, and power dissipation of the actuator. The foremost consideration is the thermal impedance of the actuator and heat dissipati... View full abstract»

Terrain identification is essential for the control of robotic transtibial prostheses to realize smooth locomotion transitions. In this paper, we present a real-time fuzzy-logic-based terrain identification method with multisensor fusion. Five locomotion features, including the foot inclination angle at the first strike, the shank inclination angle at the first strike, foot strike sequence, the fo... View full abstract»

The biologically inspired strategy of distributed inward gripping (DIG) is presented in this study as a method for foot attachment and adhesion during gravity-independent climbing. As observed in nature, this strategy enables climbing animals to maneuver rapidly on surfaces in any orientation with respect to gravity, and does not require significant energy expenditure for attachment or detachment.... View full abstract»

This paper presents the design, implementation, and experimental validation of a haptic glove mechanism: the RML glove (Robotics and Mechatronics Lab). The designed haptic interface is a lightweight, portable, and self-contained mechatronic system that fits on a bare hand and provides haptic force feedback to each finger of the hand without constraining their movement. In order to experimentally t... View full abstract»

Vacuum adsorption is a simple but effective attaching method widely used in many fields including robotic wall climbing. It is required that the sucker is aligned well with the target surface to form airtight chamber for vacuum generation. For applications in biped wall-climbing robots, automatically aligning the sucker with the wall is beneficial and important to enhance the efficiency and effect... View full abstract»

This paper deals with the forward kinematic calibration of a bionic arm inspired from the organic elephant trunk and called compact bionic handling assistant (CBHA). First, a forward kinematic model is developed based on the principle of the constant curvature continuum robot theory. Then, two experimental setups are proposed in order to carry out the model calibration and validation. The first on... View full abstract»

This paper investigates the problem of vibration isolation for vehicle active suspension systems, where parameter uncertainties, external disturbances, actuator saturation, and performance constraints are considered in an unified framework. A constrained adaptive robust control technology is developed to not only stabilize the attitude of vehicle in the context of parameter uncertainties and exter... View full abstract»

Variable stiffness actuation promises many benefits regarding mechanism robustness, energy efficiency, and dynamic performance. Here, we analyze the bidirectional antagonistic variable stiffness (BAVS) joint. A comprehensive overview of several aspects is given with a focus on the stiffness and torque characteristics of the joint. First, the functionality and properties of the abstract joint model... View full abstract»

In recent years, magnetorheological (MR) clutches have been increasingly used for realizing compliant actuation. One difficulty in using MR clutches is the existence of nonlinear hysteretic behaviors between the input current and output torque of an MR clutch. In this paper, a new closed-loop, field-programable-gate-array (FPGA)-based control scheme to linearize an MR clutch's input-output relatio... View full abstract»

In recent years, the robotic research area has become extremely prolific in terms of wearable active exoskeletons for human body motion assistance, with the presentation of many novel devices, for upper limbs, lower limbs, and the hand. The hand shows a complex morphology, a high intersubject variability, and offers limited space for physical interaction with a robot: as a result, hand exoskeleton... View full abstract»

Tremor is a rhythmical and involuntary oscillatory movement of a body part. In addition to social embarrassment, tremor can be debilitating for daily activities. Recently, wearable active exoskeletons emerged as a noninvasive tremor suppression alternative to medication or surgery. The challenge in musculoskeletal tremor suppression is identifying and attenuating the tremor motion without adding r... View full abstract»

Shear strain is exactly described by combining the piezoelectric constitutive equations of d15 mode with the Timoshenko beam model. We provide an electromechanical model to evaluate the energy harvesting performance of shear mode cantilevered piezoelectric bimorph in series connection. The output peak voltage-frequency and the output peak power-frequency curves are simulated by using th... View full abstract»