Design of an anthropomorphic dual-arm robot with biologically inspired 8-DOF arms

From the perspective of kinematics, dual-arm manipulation in robots differs from single-arm manipulation in that it requires high dexterity in a specific region of the manipulator’s workspace. This feature has motivated research on the specialized design of manipulators for dual-arm robots. These recently introduced robots often utilize a shoulder structure with a tilted angle of some magnitude. The tilted shoulder yields better kinematic performance for dual-arm manipulation, such as a wider common workspace for each arm. However, this method tends to reduce total workspace volume, which results in lower kinematic performance for single-arm tasks in the outer region of the workspace. To overcome this trade-off, the authors of this study propose a design for a dual-arm robot with a biologically inspired four degree-of-freedom shoulder mechanism. This study analyzes the kinematic performance of the proposed design and compares it with that of a conventional dual-arm robot from the perspective of workspace and single-/dual-arm manipulability. The comparative analysis revealed that the proposed structure can significantly enhance single- and dual-arm kinematic performance in comparison with conventional dual-arm structures. This superior kinematic performance was verified through experiments, which showed that the proposed method required shorter settling time and trajectory-following performance than the conventional dual-arm robot.     

Optimized design of a body-powered finger prosthesis using fingertip trajectories based on polar coordinate analysis

This paper presents a design and evaluation of a customized finger prosthesis that generates a natural finger motion. The design of the prosthesis followed two primary requirements: i) The size of the prosthesis should reflect that of an amputee’s finger; ii) the prosthesis should enable the natural finger motion of the amputee. To achieve these aims, two methods were employed: i) An incomplete fourbar mechanism by utilizing the remaining joint of a subject as the joint in the mechanism; ii) a fingertip trajectory analysis in polar coordinates to model the natural finger motion. In this paper, we focused on the design of the finger prosthesis so that the prototype was manufactured based on the finger information of a normal subject before applying it to the actual finger amputee. The performance of the proposed system was verified by intensive experiments for grasping and manipulation with the proposed system.

     

Deep Q-network-based multi-criteria decision-making framework for virtual simulation environment

Neural Computing and Applications - Deep learning improves the realistic expression of virtual simulations specifically to solve multi-criteria decision-making problems, which are generally rely on...     

Development of Anthropomorphic Robot Finger for Violin Fingering

This paper proposes a robot hand for a violin‐playing robot and introduces a newly developed robot finger. The proposed robot hand acts as the left hand of the violin‐playing robot system. The violin fingering plays an important role in determining the tone or sound when the violin is being played. Among the diverse types of violin fingering playing, it is not possible to produce vibrato with simple position control. Therefore, we newly designed a three‐axis load cell for force control, which is mounted at the end of the robot finger. Noise is calculated through an analysis of the resistance difference across the strain gauge attached to the proposed three‐axis load cell. In order to ensure the stability of the three‐axis load cell by analyzing the stress distribution, the strain generated in the load cell is also verified through a finite element analysis. A sound rating quality system previously developed by the authors is used to compare and analyze the sound quality of the fourth‐octave C‐note played by a human violinist and the proposed robot finger.