Heuristic Expanding Disconnected Graph:A Rapid Path Planning Method for Mobile Robots

Existing mobile robots mostly use graph search algorithms for path planning,which suffer from relatively low planning efficiency owing to high redundancy and large computational complexity.Due to the limitations of the neighborhood search strategy,the robots could hardly obtain the most optimal global path.A global path planning algorithm,denoted as EDG*,is proposed by expanding nodes using a well-designed expanding disconnected graph operator(EDG)in this paper.Firstly,all obstacles are marked and their corners are located through the map pre-processing.Then,the EDG operator is designed to find points in non-obstruction areas to complete the rapid expansion of disconnected nodes.Finally,the EDG*heuristic iterative algorithm is proposed.It selects the candidate node through a specific valuation function and realizes the node expansion while avoiding collision with a minimum offset.Path planning experiments were conducted in a typical indoor environment and on the public dataset CSM.The result shows that the proposed EDG*reduced the planning time by more than 90%and total length of paths reduced by more than 4.6%.Compared to A*,Dijkstra and JPS,EDG*does not show an exponential explosion effect in map size.The EDG*showed better performance in terms of path smoothness,and collision avoidance.This shows that the EDG*algorithm proposed in this paper can improve the efficiency of path planning and enhance path quality.

Safety control strategy of spinal lamina cutting based on force and cutting depth signals

Laminectomy is one of the most common posterior spinal operations. Since the lamina is adjacent to important tissues such as nerves, once damaged, it can cause serious com-plications and even lead to paralysis. In order to prevent the above injuries and com-plications, ultrasonic bone scalpel and surgical robots have been introduced into spinal laminectomy, and many scholars have studied the recognition method of the bone tissue status. Currently, almost all methods to achieve recognition of bone tissue are based on sensor signals collected by high‐precision sensors installed at the end of surgical robots. However, the previous methods could not accurately identify the state of spinal bone tissue. Innovatively, the identification of bone tissue status was regarded as a time series classification task, and the classification algorithm LSTM‐FCN was used to process fusion signals composed of force and cutting depth signals, thus achieving an accurate classi-fication of the lamina bone tissue status. In addition, it was verified that the accuracy of the proposed method could reach 98.85% in identifying the state of porcine spinal laminectomy. And the maximum penetration distance can be controlled within 0.6 mm, which is safe and can be used in practice.

Bioinspiration review of Aquatic Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(AquaUAV)

The performance of Aquatic Unmanned Aerial Vehicle(AquaUAV)has always been limited so far and far from practical applications,due to insufficient propulsion,large-resistance structure etc.Aerial-aquatic amphibians in nature may facilitate the development of AquaUAV since their excellent amphibious locomotion capabilities evolved under long-term natural selection.This article will take four typical aerial-aquatic amphibians as representatives,i.e.,gannet,cormorant,flying fish and flying squid.We summarized the multi-mode locomotion process of common aerial-aquatic amphibians and the evolutionary trade-offs they have made to adapt to amphibious environments.The four typical propulsion mechanisms were investigated,which may further inspire the propulsion design of the AquaUAV.And their morphological models could guide the layout optimization.Finally,we reviewed the state of art in AquaUAV to validate the potential value of our bioinspiration,and discussed the futureprospects.

软体机器人的仿生物理智能

生物可以在各种非结构化自然环境中生存,其身体中所蕴含的物理智能至关重要,涉及材料、结构和形态等要素.通过融合仿生物理智能,有望降低软体机器人的控制成本,提高机器人系统的响应速度和极端环境下的鲁棒性,以及使微型机器人更加智能化.本文阐述了自然界生物的材料、结构、形态学物理智能特征及其原理,介绍了软体机器人实现仿生物理智能的目的及相关的关键技术与方法,列举了软体机器人仿生物理智能的典型应用,最后展望了软体机器人仿生物理智能的未来发展及挑战.软体机器人仿生物理智能有望在高速动态作业、极端环境探索及微型机器人智能化等方面发挥独特的优势,相关研究将进一步促进生物、机器人、材料、化学和计算机学科之间的交叉.

A Soft Bionic Gripper with Variable Effective Length

This article presented a four-fingered soft bionic robotic gripper with variable effective actuator lengths. By combining approaches of finite element analysis, quasi-static analytical modeling, and experimental measurements, the deformation of the single soft actuator as a function of air pressure input in free space was analyzed. To investigate the effect of the effective actuator length on the gripping per- formance of the gripper, we conducted systematical experiments to evaluate the pull-off force, the actuation speed, the precision and error tolerance of the soft gripper while grasping objects of various sizes and shapes. A combination of depressurization and pressurization in actuation as well as applying variable effective actuator length enhanced the gripper＇s performance significantly, with no sensors. For example, with tunable effective actuator length, the gripper was able to grasp objects ranging from 2 mm 170 mm robustly. Under the optimal length, the gripper could generate the maximum pull-off force for the corresponding object size; the precision and the error tolerance of the gripper were also significantly improved compared to those of the gripper with full-length. Our soft robotic prototype exhibits a simple control and low-cost approach of gripping a wide range of objects and may have wide leverage for future industrial operations.

A Bio-inspired Soft Robotic Arm： Kinematic Modeling and Hydrodynamic Experiments

Soft robotics has several promising properties for aquatic applications, such as safe interaction with environments, lightweight, low cost, etc. In this paper, we proposed the kinematic modeling and hydrodynamics experiments of a soft robotic arm with 3D locomotion capacity. We developed a mathematical model that incorporates the angle correction, as well as the open-loop model-based motion control. The model could precisely predict the three-dimensional （3D） movement, and the location error is less than 5.7 mm in different attitudes. Furthermore, we performed the hydrodynamic investigations and simultaneously measured the hydrodynamic forces and the wake flows at different amplitudes （50 mm, 100 mm, 150 mm, 200 mm） and frequencies （0.3 Hz, 0.4 Hz, 0.5 Hz） of the soft arm. Surprisingly, we found that the magnitudes of the hydrodynamic force （〈1 N） and the torques （〈0.08 N-m） of dynamically moving soft arm were tiny, which leads to negligible inertial effect for the underwater vehicle than those of the traditional rigid underwater manipulator. Finally, we demonstrated underwater picking and placing tasks of the soft manipulator by using a computer program that controls the tip attitude and velocity. This study may inspire future underwater manipulators that have properties of low-inertial, low power cost and can safely interact with the aauatic environments.

Cormorant Webbed-feet Support Water-surface Takeoff:Quantitative Analysis via CFD

The bio-inspired aerial–aquatic vehicle off ers attractive perspectives for future intelligent robotic systems.Cormorant’s webbed-feet support water-surface takeoff is a typical locomotion pattern of amphibious water birds,but its highly maneuverable and agile kinetic behaviors are inconvenient to measure directly and challenging to calculate convergently.This paper presents a numerical Computational Fluid Dynamic(CFD)technique to simulate and reproduce the cormorant's surface takeoff process by modeling the three-dimensional biomimetic cormorant.Quantitative numerical analysis of the fluid flows and hydrodynamic forces around a cormorant’s webbed feet,body,and wings are conducted,which are consistent with experimental results and theoretical verification.The results show that the webbed feet indeed produced a large majority of the takeoff power during the initial takeoff stage.Prior lift and greater angle of attack are generated to bring the body off the water as soon as possible.With the discussion of the mechanism of the cormorant’s water-surface takeoff and the relevant characteristics of biology,the impetus and attitude adjustment strategies of the aerial–aquatic vehicle in the takeoff process are illustrated.