A finite-time fuzzy adaptive output-feedback fault-tolerant control for underactuated wheeled mobile robots systems

This paper investigates the adaptive fuzzy finite-time output-feedback fault-tolerant control (FTC) problemfor a class of nonlinear underactuated wheeled mobile robots (UWMRs) system with intermittent actuatorfaults. The UWMR system includes unknown nonlinear dynamics and immeasurable states. Fuzzy logic systems(FLSs) are utilized to work out immeasurable functions. Furthermore, with the support of the backsteppingcontrol technique and adaptive fuzzy state observer, a fuzzy adaptive finite-time output-feedback FTC scheme isdeveloped under the intermittent actuator faults. It is testifying the scheme can ensure the controlled nonlinearUWMRs is stable and the estimation errors are convergent. Finally, the comparison results and simulationvalidate the effectiveness of the proposed fuzzy adaptive finite-time FTC approach.

An Anthropomorphic Robot Hand Developed Based on Underactuated Mechanism and Controlled by EMG Signals

When developing a humanoid myo-control hand,not only the mechanical structure should be considered to afford a high dexterity,but also the myoelectric (electromyography,EMG) control capability should be taken into account to fully accomplish the actuation tasks.This paper presents a novel humanoid robotic myocontrol hand (AR hand Ⅲ) which adopted an underac- tuated mechanism and a forearm myocontrol EMG method.The AR hand Ⅲ has five fingers and 15 joints,and actuated by three embedded motors.Underactuation can be found within each finger and between the rest three fingers (the middle finger,the ring finger and the little finger) when the hand is grasping objects.For the EMG control,two specific methods are proposed:the three-fingered hand gesture configuration of the AR hand Ⅲ and a pattern classification method of EMG signals based on a statistical learning algorithm-Support Vector Machine (SVM).Eighteen active hand gestures of a testee are recognized ef- fectively,which can be directly mapped into the motions of AR hand Ⅲ.An on-line EMG control scheme is established based on two different decision functions:one is for the discrimination between the idle and active modes,the other is for the recog- nition of the active modes.As a result,the AR hand Ⅲ can swiftly follow the gesture instructions of the testee with a time delay less than 100 ms.

Design Considerations for an Underactuated Robotic Finger Mechanism

A design approach is presented in this paper for underactuation in robotic finger mechanisms. The characters of underactuated finger mechanisms are introduced as based on linkage and spring systems. The feature of self-adaptive enveloping grasp by underactuated finger mechanisms is discussed with feasible in grasping unknown objects. The design problem of robotic fingers is analyzed by looking at many aspects for an optimal functionality. Design problems and requirements for underactuated mechanisms are formulated as related to human-like robotic fingers. In particular, characteristics of finger mechanisms are analyzed and optimality criteria are summarized with the aim to formulate a general design algorithm. A general multi-objective optimization design approach is applied as based on a suitable optimization problem by using suitable expressions of optimality criteria. An example is illustrated as an improvement of finger mechanism in Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics （LARM） Hand. Results of design outputs and grasp simulations are reported with the aim to show the practical feasibility of the proposed concepts and computations.

FORCE OPTIMIZATION OF GRASPING BY ROBOTIC HANDS

It is important for robotic hands to obtain optimal grasping performance inthe meanwhile balancing external forces and maintaining grasp stability. The problem of forceoptimization of grasping is solved in the space of joint torques. A measure of grasping performanceis presented to protect joint actuators from working in heavy payloads. The joint torques arecalculated for the optimal performance under the frictional constraints and the physical limits ofmotor outputs. By formulating the grasping forces into the explicit function of joint torques, thefrictional constraints imposed on the grasping forces are transformed into the constraints on jointtorques. Without further simplification, the nonlinear frictional constraints can be simply handledin the process of optimization. Two numerical examples demonstrate the simplicity and effectivenessof the approach.

A New Grasping Mode Based on a Sucked-type Underactuated Hand

Robot hands have been developing during the last few decades. There are many mechanical structures and analyti?cal methods for di erent hands. But many tough problems still limit robot hands to apply in homelike environment. The ability of grasping objects covering a large range of sizes and various shapes is fundamental for a home service robot to serve people better. In this paper, a new grasping mode based on a novel sucked?type underactuated(STU) hand is proposed. By combining the flexibility of soft material and the e ect of suction cups, the STU hand can grasp objects with a wide range of sizes, shapes and materials. Moreover, the new grasping mode is suitable for some situations where the force closure is failure. In this paper, we deduce the e ective range of sizes of objects which our hand using the new grasping mode can grasp. Thanks to the new grasping mode, the ratio of grasping size between the biggest object and the smallest is beyond 40, which makes it possible for our robot hand to grasp diverse objects in our daily life. For example, the STU hand can grasp a soccer(220 mm diameter, 420 g) and a fountain pen(9 mm diameter, 9 g). What’s more, we use the rigid body equilibrium conditions to analysis the force condition. Experiment evaluates the high load capacity, stability of the new grasping mode and displays the versatility of the STU hand. The STU hand has a wide range of applications especially in unstructured environment.

Development of an underactuated prosthetic hand with the step motor

We present the development of a novel prosthetic hand based on the underactuated mechanism. The aim is focused on increasing its dexterity while keeping the same dimension and weight of a traditional prosthetic device. The hybrid step motor is used as the actuator, which enables the finger to keep enough high contact torque on the grasped object with less energy consumption provided by the holding torque. The grasping force of the finger is estimated from the base joint torque, and the adoption of impedance control has provided compliance in the grasping. Also a parallel observer is used to switch over between the impedance control and the torque holding mode. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the design and control strategy.

HIT anthropomorphic robotic hand and finger motion control

Nowadays many anthropomorphic robotic hands have been put forward. These hands emphasize different aspects according to their applications. HIT Anthropomorphic Robotic Hand (ARhand) is a simple, lightweight and dexterous design per the requirements of anthropomorphic robots. Underactuated self-adaptive theory is adopted to decrease the number of motors and weight. The fingers of HIT ARhand with multi phalanges have the same size as those of an adult hand. Force control is realized with the position sensor, joint torque sensor and fingertip torque sensor. From the 3D model, the whole hand, with the low power consumption DSP control board integrated in it, will weigh only 500 g. It will be assembled on a BIT-Anthropomorphic Robot.

Configuration Design of an Under-Actuated Robotic Hand Based on Maximum Grasping Space

Capture is a key component for on?orbit service and space debris clean. The current research of capture on?orbit focuses on using special capture devices or full?actuated space arms to capture cooperative targets. However, the structures of current capture devices are complex, and both space debris and abandoned spacecraft are non?cooperative targets. To capture non?cooperative targets in space, a lightweight, less driven under?actuated robotic hand is proposed in this paper, which composed by tendon?pulley transmission and double?stage mechanisms, and always driven by only one motor in process of closing finger. Because of the expandability, general grasping model is constructed. The equivalent joint driving forces and general grasping force are analyzed based on the model and the principle of virtual work. Which reveal the relationship among tendon driving force, joint driving forces and grasping force. In order to configure the number of knuckles of finger, a new analysis method which takes the maximum grasping space into account, is proposed. Supposing the maximum grasped object is an envelope circle with diameter of 2.5m. In the condition, a finger grasping maximum envelope circle with different knuckles is modeled. And the finger lengths with corresponding knuckles are calculated out. The finger length which consists of three knuckles is the shortest among under?actuated fingers consists of not more than five knuckles. Finally, the principle prototype and prototype robotic hand which consists of two dingers are designed and assembled. Experiments indicate that the under?actuated robotic hand can satisfy the grasp requirements.

A five-fingered underactuated prosthetic hand:hardware and its control scheme

A five-fingered underactuated prosthetic hand controlled by surface EMG (electromyographic) signals is presented in this paper. The prosthetic hand was designed with simplicity, lightweight and dexterity on the requirement of anthropomorphic hands. Underactuated self-adaptive theory was adopted to decrease the number of motors and weight. The control part of the prosthetic hand was based on a surface EMG motion pattern classifier which combines LM-based (Levenberg-Marquardt) neural network with the parametric AR (autoregressive) model. This motion pattern classifier can successfully identify the flexions of the thumb, the index finger and the middle finger by measuring the surface EMG signals through two electrodes mounted on the flexor digitorum profundus and flexor pollicis longus. Furthermore, via continuously controlling a single finger's motion, the five-fingered underactuated prosthetic hand can achieve more prehensile postures such as power grasp, centralized grip, fingertip grasp, cylindrical grasp, etc. The experimental results show that the classifier has a great potential application to the control of bionic man-machine systems because of its fast learning speed, high recognition capability and strong robustness.

Differential flatness-based distributed control of underactuated robot swarms

This paper proposes a distributed control method based on the differential flatness(DF) property of robot swarms. The swarm DF mapping is established for underactuated differentially flat dynamics, according to the control objective. The DF mapping refers to the fact that the system state and input of each robot can be derived algebraically from the flat outputs of the leaders and the cooperative errors and their finite order derivatives. Based on the proposed swarm DF mapping, a distributed controller is designed. The distributed implementation of swarm DF mapping is achieved through observer design. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through a numerical simulation of quadrotor swarm synchronization.

Slip Detection of Robotic Hand Based on Vibration Power of Pressure Center

This paper proposes an incipient slip detection method for a robotic hand based on the vibration power of the pressure center. Firstly,an array-type pressure sensor was planted into the soft skin of the robotic hand to measure the stick-slip vibration component of the pressure center generated in the process of slip of the grasped object. Secondly,the vibration power of the pressure center was calculated based on the measured stick-slip vibration component,and was used as a slip-detection function to judge the incipient slip of the grasped object. Finally,in order to use the same threshold value to judge incipient slip for different grasping forces,a weight coefficient was experimentally identified and used in the slip-detection function. The effectiveness of the proposed slip detection method was verified by experimental results,which showed that incipient slip can be detected by the proposed slip-detection function with the same threshold value for various materials,different slipping speeds grasping forces. In addition,multiple iterations of the experiment had demonstrated that the slip detection is repeatable.

Task Oriented Optimal Grasp Planning by Three Fingered Robot Hands

This paper presents a way for research on grasp planning of three fingered robot hands. According to the assortment of human hand grasping, two typical grasping poses for three finger grasps are summarized. The task requirements, the geometrical and physical features of the object and the information from the environment are synthesized. Grasp pose is deduced by task analysis, and the graspable plane is sought and determined. The process of grasp planning is finally carried out by determining three grasp points on the feasible grasp plane.

DESIGN OF A NOVEL DEXTEROUS ROBOT HAND

In the robotic community more and more hands are developed. Based on theexperience of HIT Hand and DLR Hand II, a smaller and easier manufactured dexterous robot hand withmultisen-sory function and high integration is jointly developed. The prototype of the hand issuccessfully built. It has 4 fingers in total 13-DOFs (degree of freedom). Each finger has 3-DOFsand 4 joints, the last 2 joints are mechanically coupled by means of four-bar linkage mechanism. Italso has an additional DOF to realize motion of the thumb relative to the palm. The fingertip forcecan reach up to 10 N. Full integration of mechanical body, actuation system, multisensory system andelectronics is a significant feature. DSP based control system is implemented in PCI busarchitecture and the serial communication between the hand and DSP needs only 2 lines.

Development of Gesture-Changeable under-actuated Humanoid Robotic Finger

Robotic fingers, which are the key parts of robot hand, are divided into two main kinds： dexterous fingers and under-actuated fingers. Although dexterous fingers are agile, they are too expensive. Under-actuated fingers can grasp objects self-adaptively, which makes them easy to control and low cost, on the contrary, under-actuated function makes fingers feel hard to grasp things agilely enough and make many gestures. For the purpose of designing a new finger which can grasp things dexterously, perform many gestures and feel easy to control and maintain, a concept called ＂gesture-changeable under-actuated＂ （GCUA） function is put forward. The GCUA function combines the advantages of dexterous fingers and under-actuated fingers： a pre-bending function is embedded into the under-actuated finger. The GCUA finger can not only perform self-adaptive grasping function, but also actively bend the middle joint of the finger. On the basis of the concept, a GCUA finger with 2 joints is designed, which is realized by the coordination of screw-nut transmission mechanism, flexible drawstring constraint and pulley-belt under-actuated mechanism. Principle analyses of its grasping and the design optimization of the GCUA finger are given. An important problem of how to stably grasp an object which is easy to glide is discussed. The force analysis on gliding object in grasping process is introduced in detail. A GCUA finger with 3 joints is developed. Many experiments of grasping different objects by of the finger were carried out. The experimental results show that the GCUA finger can effectively realize functions of pre-bending and self-adaptive grasping, the grasping processes are stable. The GCUA finger excels under-actuated fingers in dexterity and gesture actions and it is easier to control and cheaper than dexterous hands, becomes the third kinds of finger.

Cartesian impedance control of dexterous robot hand

Presents a novel compliant motion control for a robot hand using the Cartesian impedance approach based on fingertip force measurements. The fingertip can accurately track desired motion in free space and appear as mechanical impedance in constrained space. In the position based impedance control strategy, any switching mode in contact transition phase is not needed. The impedance parameters can be adjusted in a certain range according to various tasks. In this paper, the analysis of the finger’s kinematics and dynamics is given. Experimental results have shown the effectiveness of this control strategy.

Dynamic modelling and PFL-based trajectory tracking control for underactuated cable-driven truss-like manipulator

In recent years,an innovative underactuated robot was developed,named as underactuated cable-driven trusslike manipulator(UCTM),to be suitable in aerospace applications.However,there has been strong consensus that the stabilization of planar underactuated manipulators without gravity is a great challenge since the system includes a second order nonholonomic constraint and most classical control methods are not suitable for this kind of system.Furthermore,the complexity of the truss-like structure results in tremendous difficulty of computational complicacy and high nonlinearity during dynamic modelling in addition to controller design.It is paramount to solve these difficulties for UCTM's future applications.To solve the above difficulties,this paper presents a dynamic modelling method for UCTM and a trajectory tracking control method based on partial feedback linearization(PFL)that fulfills the control goal of moving UCTM from its original position to a desired position by tracking a given trajectory of the joint angles.To achieve this,a model equivalent method is proposed to make UCTM equivalent with a three-link manipulator in the sense of dynamic behavior.Then the Lagrangian equation combined with complex vector method is proposed in the dynamic modelling process of UCTM,which simplifies the derivation procedure.Based on the established dynamic model,a coordinate transformation method is proposed to transform the control force matrix into the conventional form of an underactuated system,so that the control force can be separated from the unactuated term.The PFL method in combination with the LQR control method is then proposed to realize the targets that the joint angles can track given desired trajectory.Simulation experiments are conducted to verify the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed methods.

DSP ＆ FPGA-based control architecture for a highly integrated robot hand with enhanced impedance performance

A novel control system is developed to improve the capabilities of robet hand performing tasks in a variety of environments. A joint impedance control strategy has been successfully implemented in the low level control of a highly integrated robot hand. At flint, a real time controller with DSP＆FPGA-based multilevel control architecture is built. Then a current sensor of the single direct current （DC） link is used to measure and reconstruct the three phase currents, and a stable current signal is measured by optimizing sample instant. The experimental results of the joint impedance control show that the proposed method not only improves the effectiveness of contact environment performance, but also provides compliant interaction of robot hand with a person, which is very important for the development of friendly human robot of the next generation.

Real-time accurate hand path tracking and joint trajectory planning for industrial robots(Ⅰ)

Previously, researchers raised the accuracy for a robot′s hand to track a specified path in Car-tesian space mainly through increasing the number of knots on the path and the number of the path′s segments, which results in the heavier online computational burden for the robot controller. Aiming at overcoming this drawback, the authors propose a new kind of real-time accurate hand path tracking and joint trajectory planning method. Through selecting some extra knots on the specified hand path by a certain rule and introducing a sinusoidal function to the joint displacement equation of each segment, this method can greatly raise the path tracking accuracy of robot′s hand and does not change the number of the path′s segments. It also does not increase markedly the computational burden of robot controller. The result of simulation indicates that this method is very effective, and has important value in increasing the application of industrial robots.

Imaginary displacement method for analysis of multi-fingered robot hands grasping stability

Gives an overview of the present status of researches on grasp stability of multi fingered dexterous robot hands,presents the imaginary displacement method for evaluating the grasp stability, which is easy to realize on computer,and has no limit on contact points for each finger. Analyses for grasping stability with single contact point of typical objects with different curvature proved the effectiveness of the method proposed and optimal grasp examples are given as well.

Coordinated control and autonomous grasp with multifingered robot hands

Presents major achievements in researches on coordinated control with multifingered robot hands by first briefing the present status of researches on multifingered robot hands, then discussing the coordinated control with multifingered robot hands, and finally exploring the way of achieving autonomous grasp, and thoughts on future researches.