1,721,306 research outputs found
Robotics in Second Life
No full textVirtual worlds are quickly growing; both in interactivity and realism, users can experience through their avatars, and the number of actual users is continuously growing as well. Among the virtual worlds, Second Life (SL) is perhaps one of the most famous. This article presents a project whose aim is to use SL as a means to spread robotics culture as well as to investigate possible paradigms of social interaction in heterogeneous communities of robots and humans. As a first step, a point of presence has been established in SL through the development of a building to represent and host the activities of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS). In addition, simplified models and behaviors of some robots have been reproduced and used for demonstrations both within and around the building itself
Beyond the Pandemic: The Role of Haptics in Defining the New Normal
No full textDiscusses the role haptics technology plays in the COVID-19 pandemic. Haptics permeates our lives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, where social distancing continues to affect the way we interact with other people and the environment, haptic technology can play a pivotal role in bringing touch back into our everyday lives. Haptic technology is shifting from something useful to improve virtual and remote interactions into something vital for the physical and particularly mental wellbeing of the human species
Squaring Down LTI Systems: A Geometric Approach
Full text linkIn this paper, the problem of reducing a given LTI system into a left or right invertible one is addressed and solved with the standard tools
of the geometric control theory. First, it will be shown how an LTI system can be turned into a left invertible system, thus preserving key
system properties like stabilizability, phase minimality, right invertibility, relative degree and infinite zero structure. Moreover, the additional
invariant zeros introduced in the left invertible system thus obtained can be arbitrarily assigned in the complex plane. By duality, the scheme
of a right inverter will be derived straightforwardly. Moreover, the squaring down problem will be addressed. In fact, when the left and right
reduction procedures are applied together, a system with an unequal number of inputs and outputs is turned into a square and invertible system.
Furthermore, as an example it will be shown how these techniques may be employed to weaken the standard assumption of left invertibility
of the plant in many optimization problems
An auto-epipolar strategy for mobile robot visual servoing
No full textA novel visual servoing method is presented. The algorithm works for both apparent contours and point features and does not require any information about the internal camera parameters. The proposed visual servoing is based on the epipolar geometry and exploits the autoepipolar property, a special configuration for the epipoles which occurs when the desired and current views undergo a pure translation. This occurrence is simply detectable from special line conditions on the overlapped current and desired images. Experiments are presented to validate the proposed visual servoing
Augmenting Human Manipulation Abilities with Supernumerary Robotic Limbs
No full textThis book offers a timely report on an emerging topic in the field of wearable assistive technology: the design and development of robotic extra fingers. After a concise review of the state of the art and a description of earlier prototypes, it discusses the authors’ efforts to address issues such as portability and wearability of the devices, including strategies to reduce fatigue and to integrate the motion of the extra fingers with that of the human hand. The book also explores optimized control algorithms and the design of wearable sensorimotor interfaces, and presents a set of tests carried out on healthy subjects and chronic stroke patients. Merging concepts from robotics, biomechanics, human factors and control theory and offering an overview of supernumerary robotic fingers, including the challenges, this book will inspire researchers involved in the development of wearable robotic devices and interfaces based on the principles of wearability, safety, ergonomics and user comfort
A geometric solution to the squaring down problem
No full textThis paper addresses the problem of the squaring down of LTI systems with the tools of the geometric control theory. More precisely, it is shown how a generic system can be turned into a square and invertible system by means of a state-feedback and an output-injection, and of two static units cascaded at the input and at the output of the given system. In this way, key system properties like phase-minimality, relative degree and infinite zero structure are preserved after the squaring down, and the additional invariant zeros introduced can be arbitrarily assigned in the complex plane
Motion-decoupled internal force control in grasping with visco-elastic contacts
No full textRobotic grasps exhibiting visco-elastic contact interactions with the manipulated object are considered. Control of internal forces is investigated. The presence of nonnegligible compliance at contacts, implies that the object dynamics cannot be neglected when attempting to control internal forces without affecting the object position. A dynamic internal force control is proposed. It is decoupled with respect to the rigid-body object motions
Plane Detection with Stereo Images
No full textThis paper presents how to detect planes from a set of corresponding points with a stereo camera system. We show that, in the presence of two cameras aligned to the same orientation, it is possible to compute the normal vector to a plane by using only three corresponding points whereas with traditional methods this computation requires at least four points and the decomposition of the homography matrix. We obtain the triangulation of the set of features and we compute for every triangle its normal vector. By grouping adjacent triangles with equal normal we are able to select all the points belonging to the same plane. The method does not require any information about the camera calibration or the camera relative translation. Simulation and experiments on real images validate the proposed algorithm
Manipulability of cooperating robots with passive joints
No full textIn this paper we study the differential kinematics and the kineto-static manipulability indices of multiple cooperating robot arms, including active and passive joints. The kinetic manipulability indices are derived as a simple extension of previous results on cooperating robots without passive joints. The force manipulability analysis for cooperative robot systems can not be derived by “duality” arguments as it can with conventional arms, rather a distinction between active and passive force manipulability is necessary. Results in the paper apply directly to the analysis of simply closed kinematic chains, and can be extended to multiply closed kinematic chains
- …
