未知环境下基于约束点的移动机器人路径规划

针对未知环境中障碍物种类多样性和位置不确定性的特点,提出了基于约束点的路径规划方法。首先对机器人在未知环境中检测到的局部障碍物信息进行分类和几何特征属性描述,得其约束点信息,然后引入改进后的A*算法,将其搜索范围局限于约束点上,计算约束点的评价函数值后得到子目标点,机器人到达子目标点后,若陷入死区,则采取回溯路径策略,重新选择子目标点,否则根据该点所属的障碍物种类采取跨越或绕行避障策略,最后移动机器人在未知环境中顺利到达目标点。仿真研究说明本文提出的路径规划方法具有可行性和有效性。     

油-气管道检测机器人技术现状及展望

为提高油-气管道检测的效果,结合国内外典型管道机器人的特点,综合分析了管道机器人运动控制技术、定位技术和实时检测技术3个方面的现状,并指出了核心技术的不足;针对石油化工行业高温带压管道环境,提出管道检测机器人的研究重点为分层模糊神经网络运动控制技术、CCD视觉定位技术、低频电磁定位技术和分层图像分割的优化方法等。为进一步提高化工油-气管道内检测机器人的检测效果提供了理论依据。     

PLC在六关节工业机器人控制中的设计应用

本文介绍了应用可编程控制器PLC对六关节工业机器人进行位置控制的方法及其软件硬件系统的设计与实现。     

多关节机器人通用体系结构的研究

结合一个五自由度教学工业两用型机器人应用实例，构造出多关节机器人通用体系结构，包括总体原型、机械结构、关节传动链、伺服驱动元件、电气控制系统、关节坐标系及其运动学方程、通信协议和软件设计思路等。通过实际使用表明，本文提出的通用体系结构是实用的、合理的。     

Utility of stereoscopic displays for indirect-vision driving and robot teleoperation

The effectiveness of an active shutter-glasses stereoscopic display (SD) and a passive polarised SD was evaluated in a live robot-teleoperation task and a simulated indirect-vision driving task in various terrains. Overall, participants completed their tasks significantly faster with the SDs in three-dimensional (3D) mode than with the SDs in the baseline 2D mode. They also navigated more accurately with the SDs in 3D mode. When the effectiveness of the two types of SDs was examined separately, results showed that the active shutter-glasses SD resulted in faster responses and task completion times than the passive polarised SD, though most of the differences failed to reach statistical significance. Perceived workload when interacting with the two SD systems did not differ significantly between the active versus passive display types or between the 3D and 2D modes of operation; however, participants reported more severe discomfort after interacting with the passive polarised SD.     

A binary approximating method for graspable region determination of biped climbing robots

For a biped pole-climbing robot (BiPCR) with grippers, it is an essential demand to determine the target grasp configuration for climbing and transiting between poles, with the graspable region as a priori knowledge. The graspable region on the target pole is critically important for climbing path planning and motion control. To efficiently compute the graspable region for a BiPCR, we propose a novel binary approximating method in this paper. This method may also be applied to generate the three-dimensional (3-D) workspace of a manipulator with constant orientation. The grasping problem and the concept of graspable region for a BiPCR are first introduced. The binary approximating method and the corresponding algorithms are then presented to generate the graspable region. Additional constraints on a biped climbing robot with five degrees of freedom (DoFs) are presented as a supplement to the algorithm. A series of comprehensive simulations are conducted with the five-DoF and six-DoF climbing robots to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Finally, the dexterity of biped climbing robots with different DoFs is discussed.     

Model reference adaptive impedance control in Cartesian coordinates for physical human–robot interaction

In this paper, a nonlinear model reference adaptive impedance controller is proposed and tested. The controller provides asymptotic tracking of a reference impedance model for the robot end-effector in Cartesian coordinates applicable to rehabilitation robotics or any other human–robot interactions such as haptic systems. The controller uses the parameters of a desired stable reference model which is the target impedance for the robot’s end-effector. It also considers uncertainties in the model parameters of the robot. The asymptotic tracking is proven using Lyapunov stability theorem. Moreover, the adaptation law is proposed in joint space for reducing the complexity of its calculations; however, the controller and the stability proof are all presented in Cartesian coordinates. Using simulations and experiments on a two DOFs robot, the effectiveness of the proposed controller is investigated.     

Design of a slave arm of a surgical robot system to estimate the contact force at the tip of the employed instruments

Acquisition of the contact force at the instrument tip can enable better performance, e.g. transparency of the haptic feedback in the surgical robot systems. It is, however, difficult to measure the contact force directly due to technical limitations in attaching sensors to the tip of the instruments. This paper proposes a method to estimate the forces by installing the sensors away from the instrument tip. The proposed method employs specially designed mechanical parts of the slave robot, i.e. a slider cover plate for the z-axis translational force along the insertion direction, and docking clamps for the rotational pivot torques around the fulcrum point. Strain gauges are attached to specially designed places with enhancing shapes. The simulation results of the force estimation are presented to confirm the strain concentration area. The proposed method is validated with quantitative experimental results. Calibrated weights are determined upon the comparison of the strain value with a calibrated 6-axis force/torque sensor. The percentage error in the force calibration is about 5~8% calculated by the root mean square error (RMSE) of force-sensing performance. In addition, it can be computed by considering only the bending phase of each sensor although the hysteresis is observed from the calibration graph.     

Tactile display with tangential and normal skin displacement for robot-assisted surgery

This paper proposes a tactile display providing both shear and normal feedback to the fingertip for generating three-axis tactile feedback during teleoperation of a surgical robot. The display is composed of five balloons actuated by controlling the pneumatic pressure. The implemented display is 18?mm?×?18?mm?×?15?mm. This size is suitable for mounting the display onto the master controls of a surgical robot. The maximum normal and shear displacements are 2 and 1.3?mm, respectively. The proposed tactile display may provide perceivable stimuli to a human finger pad in all five directions: normal, distal, proximal, radial, and ulnar. This paper also reports on the results of psychophysical measurement of the minimum perceivable movement of the developed tactile display for each of the five directions.