This work presents a design and control method for a flexible robot arm operated by a wire drive that follows human gestures. When moving the robot arm to a desired position, the necessary wire moving length is calculated and the motors are rotated accordingly to the length. A robotic arm is composed of a total of two module-formed mechanism similar to real human motion. Two wires are used as a closed loop in one module, and universal joints are attached to each disk to create up, down, left, and right movements. In order to control the motor, the anti-windup PID was applied to limit the sudden change usually caused by accumulated error in the integral control term. In addition, master/ slave communication protocol and operation program for linking 6 motors to MYO sensor and IMU sensor output were developed at the same time. This makes it possible to receive the image information of the camera attached to the robot arm and simultaneously send the control command to the robot at high speed.

Unlike normal wheels, the Mecanum wheel enables omni-directional movement regardless of the orientation of a mobile robot. In this paper, a robust trajectory tracking control method is developed based on the dynamic model of the Mecanum wheel mobile robot in order that the mobile robot can move along the given path in the environment with disturbance. The method is designed using the impedance control to make the mobile robot to track the path, and the integral sliding mode control for robustness to disturbance. The good performance of the proposed method is verified using the MATLAB /Simulink simulation and also through the experiment on an actual Mecanum wheel mobile robot. In both the simulation and the experimentation, we make the mobile robot move along a reference trajectory while maintaining the robot's orientation at a constant angle to see the characteristics of the Mecanum wheel.

수중에서 로봇으로 사석 고르기 작업을 실시할 경우 로봇 주위의 지형 정보를 실시간으로 제공해야 원격조종이 가능하다. 현 위치로 부터 주변지형의 높낮이를 보여줘야 운전자가 작업 계획을 수립하고, 전복과 같은 사고도 예방할 수 있다. 지금까지 지형인식은 멀티 빔 소나에 의해 이뤄졌는데 이는 작업 전후의 품질을 평가하는 용도만 사용되었지 원격조종에서 필요한 실시간 정보로는 사용될 수 없었다. 본 연구는 수중 사석 고르기 작업을 위한 실시간 지형인식 방법을 개발한다. 버킷이 지면을 누를 때 전달되는 힘을 측정해 접촉여부를 판단하고, 실린더의 길이를 읽어 접촉위치를 계산한다. 버킷의 위치제어를 위해 가변 뱅뱅제어 알고리즘을 적용하고 숙련된 굴삭기 운전자의 작업패턴을 프로 그램화해 지형인식, 긁기, 밀기, 전진 등의 작업을 자동으로 수행하도록 한다. 개발된 방법은 로봇 몸체로부터 버킷의 거리에 따라 3차원 격자 지형을 상대적으로 보여줌으로써 작업자가 쉽게 지형을 인식하고 지형에 따라 작업계획을 세우도록 한다.

This paper describes a study on posture control of the multi-legged biomimetic underwater robot (CALEB10). Because the underwater environment has a feature that all degrees of freedom are coupled to each other, we designed the posture control algorithm by separating each degree of freedom. Not only should the research on posture control of underwater robots be a precedent study for position control, but it is also necessary to compensate disturbance in each direction. In the research on the yaw directional posture control, we made the drag force generated by the stroke of the left leg and the right leg occur asymmetrically, in order that a rotational moment is generated along the yaw direction. In the composite swimming controller in which the controllers in each direction are combined, we designed the algorithm to determine the control weights in each direction according to the error angle along the yaw direction. The performance of the proposed posture control method is verified by a dynamical simulator and underwater experiments.

This paper presents a force control based on the observer without taking any force or torque measurement from the robot which allows realizing more stable and robust human robot interaction for the developed multi-functional upper limb rehabilitation robot. The robot has four functional training modes which can be classified by the human robot interaction types: passive, active, assistive, and resistive mode. The proposed observer consists of internal disturbance observer and external force observer for distinctive performance evaluation. Since four training modes can be quantitatively identified as impedance variation, position-based impedance control with feedback and feedforward controller was applied to the assistive training mode. The results showed that the proposed sensorless observer estimated cleaner and more accurate force compared to the force sensor and the impedance controller embedded with the proposed observer completed the assistive training mode safely and properly.

The CALEB10 is a multi-legged biomimetic underwater robot. In the last research, we developed a swimming pattern named ESPG (Extended Swimming Pattern Generator) by observing diving beetle’s swimming actions and experimented with a positive buoyancy state in which CALEB10 floats on the water. In this paper, however, we have experimented with CALEB10 in a neutral buoyancy state where it is completely immersed in water for pitch motion control experiment. And we found that CALEB10 was unstably swimming in the pitch direction in the neutral buoyancy state and analyzed that the reason was due to the weight proportion of the legs. In this paper, we propose a pitch motion control method to mimic the pitch motion of diving beetles and to solve the problem of CALEB10 unstably swimming in the pitch direction. To control the pitch motion, we use the method of controlling additional joints while swimming with the ESPG. The method of obtaining propulsive force by the motion of the leg has a problem of giving propulsive force in the reverse direction when swimming in the surge direction, but this new control method has an advantage that a propulsive moment generated by a swimming action only on a target pitch value. To demonstrate validity this new control method, we designed a dynamics-based simulator environment. And the control performance to the target pitch value was verified through simulation and underwater experiments.

This paper present a novel approach to control the lower body power assistive exoskeleton system of a HEXAR-CR35 aimed at improving a muscular strength. More specifically the control of based on the human intention is crucial of importance to ensure intuitive and dexterous motion with the human. In this contribution, we proposed the detection algorithm of the human intention using the MCRS which are developed to measure the contraction of the muscle with variation of the circumference. The proposed algorithm provides a joint motion of exoskeleton corresponding the relate muscles. The main advantages of the algorithm are its simplicity, computational efficiency to control one joint of the HEXAR-CR35 which are consisted knee-active type exoskeleton (the other joints are consisted with the passive or quasi-passive joints that can be arranged by analyzing of the human joint functions). As a consequence, the motion of exoskeleton is generated according to the gait phase: swing and stance phase which are determined by the foot insole sensors. The experimental evaluation of the proposed algorithm is achieved in walking with the exoskeleton while carrying the external mass in the back side.

For articulated swimming robots, there have been no researches about controlling the motion or trajectory following. A control method for articulated swimming robot is suggested by extending a previous algorithm, ESPG (Extended Swimming Pattern Generator). The control method focuses on the situation that continuous pre-determined swimming pattern is applied for long range travelling. In previous studies, there has not been a way to control the propulsive force when a swimming pattern created by ESPG was in progress. Hence, no control could be made unless the swimming pattern was completed even though an error occurred while the swimming pattern was in progress. In order to solve this problem, this study analyzes swimming patterns and suggests a method to control the propulsive force even while the swimming pattern was in progress. The angular velocity of each link is influenced and this eventually modifies the propulsive force. However, The angular velocity is changed, a number of problems can occur. In order to resolve this issue, phase compensation method and synchronization method were suggested. A simple controller was designed to confirm whether the suggested methods are able to control and a simulation has affirmed it. Moreover, it was applied to CALEB 10 (a biomimetic underwater articulated robot) and the result was verified.

This paper proposes a design methodology of self-reconfigurable kinematics and control engine for modular and reconfigurable robots. A modular manipulator has been proposed to meet the requirement of task adaptation in versatile needs for service and industrial robot area and the function of self-reconfiguration is required to extend the application of modular robots. Kinematic and dynamic contexts are extracted from the module and assembly information and related codes are automatically generated including controller. Thus a user can easily build and use a modular robot without professional knowledge. Simulation results are presented to verify the validity of the proposed method.

Generating motion of center of mass for biped robots is a challenging issue since biped robots can easily lose balance due to limited contact area between foot and ground. In this paper, we propose force control method to generate high-speed motion of the center of mass for horizontal direction without losing balancing condition. Contact consistent multi-body dynamics of the robot is used to calculate force for horizontal direction of the center of mass considering balance. The calculated force is applied for acceleration or deceleration of the center of mass to generate high speed motion. The linear inverted pendulum model is used to estimate motion of the center of mass and the estimated motion is used to select either maximum or minimum force to stop at goal position. The proposed method is verified by experiments using 12-DOF torque controlled human sized legged robot.

This paper proposed a method of cooperative control of three mobile robots for carrying an object placed on a floor together. Each robot moves to the object independently from its location to a pre-designated location for grasping the object stably. After grasping the common object, the coordination among the robots has been achieved by a master-slave mode. That is, a trajectory planning has been done for the master robot and the distances form the master robot to the two slave robots have been kept constant during the carrying operation. The localization for mobile robots has been implemented using the encoder data and inverse kinematics since the whole system does not have the slippage as much as a single mobile robot. Before the carrying operation, the lifting operations are implemented using the manipulators attached on the top of the mobile robots cooperatively. The real cooperative lifting and carrying operations are implanted to show the feasibility of the master-slave mode control based on the kinematics using the mobile manipulators developed for this research.

열악한 작업환경 때문에 수중항만공사를 기계화하려는 많은 노력들이 시도되고 있다. 본 논문은 수중항만공사 중 사석 고르기 작업을 수행하는 수중건설로봇에 대해 기술한다. 로봇의 블레이드는 울퉁불퉁한 지형에서도 사석 마운드를 기준면에 대해 평편하게 고르고, 다목적 암은 사석을 파고, 채울 수 있게 설계되었다. 본 연구는 로봇에 설치된 위치 및 방위 센서와 동기를 이루면서 주행과 스윙운동이 포함된 다목 적암과 블레이드의 기구학을 해석한다. 기준수심센서에 부여된 월드좌표에 대해서 블레이드와 다목적암의 위치와 방위를 나타내고, 기준면과 나란한 고르기 작업을 위한 형상을 찾는다. 고르기 작업을 위한 유압제어시스템을 개발하며, 로봇에 의한 육상 및 수중 사석 고르기 작업을 실시해 실험결과를 보인다. 로봇의 작업속도는 잠수부보다 8배 정도 빠르며 작업품질도 우수한 것으로 평가된다. 잠수부가 작업할 수 없는 대 수심에서는 효율성이 더 좋을 것으로 기대된다.

In this paper, an exact reshaping method for the motor dynamics of a flexible-joint robot is proposed using an integral manifold approach. Obtaining the exact model for both motor-side and linkside dynamics of a flexible-joint robot is difficult due to its under-actuated nature and complex dynamics. Despite the simple structure of the motor-side dynamics, they are difficult to model accurately for a flexible-joint robot due to motor disturbances, especially when speed reducers such as harmonic drives are installed. An integral manifold feedback control (IMFC) is proposed to reshape the motor dynamics. Based on the integral manifold approach, it is theoretically proved that the IMFC reshapes motor dynamics exactly even with bounded disturbances such as motor friction. The performance of the proposed IMFC is verified experimentally using a single degree-of-freedom flexible-joint robot under gravity conditions.

This paper presents interaction force control between a balancing robot and a human operator. The balancing robot has two wheels to generate movements on the plane. Since the balancing robot is based on position control, the robot tries to maintain a desired angle to be zero when an external force is applied. This leads to the instability of the system. Thus a hybrid force control method is employed to react the external force from the operator to guide the balancing robot to the desired position by a human operator. Therefore, when an operator applies a force to the robot, desired balancing angles should be modified to maintain stable balance. To maintain stable balance under an external force, suitable desired balancing angles are determined along with force magnitudes applied by the operator through experimental studies. Experimental studies confirm the functionality of the proposed method.

In this study, we aim to develop energy efficient walking and running robot with compliant leg. So, we propose the energy efficient locomotion control method. And, we experiment the proposed control method applying to the experimental robot with compliant leg. From the experiment, we look at whether the proposed control method can the robot walk and run energy efficiently.

This paper analyzes the motion of a horseback riding robot which has two actuators and three joints. It is impossible to control the saddle to get to any position and orientation using the two motors because the robot has less degrees of freedom than the number of joints. Therefore it is required to know the possible location and orientation along with the velocity characteristics of each pose prior to motion planning. For this purpose, this paper analyzes the characteristics of the robot motion. The authors derive the forward and inverse kinematics of the robot motion and developed the trajectory editor for motion planning. Also, Jacobian of the robot is analyzed. It reveals that one of the actuator has little influence to the speed of the saddle motion while the other affects the speed of the saddle motion dominantly. The approach of the paper can be applied for the analysis of characteristics of a robot which has less number of actuators than that of joints.

This paper proposes an optimal ARS control of a two-wheel mobile inverted pendulum robot. Conventional researches are highly concentrated on the robust control of a mobile inverted pendulum on the flat ground, i.e., mostly focus on the compensation of gyroscope signals. This newly proposed algorithm deals with a climbing control of a slanted surface based on the dynamic modeling using the conventional structure. During the climbing control of the robot, unexpected disturbance forces are essentially caused by the irregular contact force which comes from the irregular contact angle between the wheel and the terrain. The disturbances have effects on the optimal posture of the mobile robot to compensate the slanted angle. Therefore the dynamics equations through physical interpretation are derived for the selection of optimum climbing posture through ARS. Also using the ultrasonic sensor the slope information is obtained to compensate for the force of gravity. The control inputs are dynamically adjusted to climb up the slanted surface effectively. The proposed algorithm is demonstrated through the real experiments.

This paper describes efficient flight control algorithms for building a reconfigurable ad-hoc wireless sensor networks between nodes on the ground and airborne nodes mounted on autonomous vehicles to increase the operational range of an aerial robot or the communication connectivity. Two autonomous flight control algorithms based on adaptive gradient climbing approach are developed to steer the aerial vehicles to reach optimal locations for the maximum communication throughputs in the airborne sensor networks. The first autonomous vehicle control algorithm is presented for seeking the source of a scalar signal by directly using the extremum-seeking based forward surge control approach with no position information of the aerial vehicle. The second flight control algorithm is developed with the angular rate command by integrating an adaptive gradient climbing technique which uses an on-line gradient estimator to identify the derivative of a performance cost function. They incorporate the network performance into the feedback path to mitigate interference and noise. A communication propagation model is used to predict the link quality of the communication connectivity between distributed nodes. Simulation study is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed reconfigurable airborne wireless networking control algorithms.

An increasing number of researches and developments for personal or professional service robots are attracting a lot of attention and interest industrially and academically during the past decade. Furthermore, the development of intelligent robots is intensively fostered as strategic industry. Until now, most of practical and commercial service robots are worked by remotely operated controller. The most important technical issue of remote control is a wireless communication, especially in the indoor and unstructured environments where communication infrastructures might be destroyed by various disasters. Therefore we propose a multi-robot following navigation method for securing the valid communication distance extension of the remote control based on WPAN(Wireless Personal Area Networks). The concept and implementation of following navigation are introduced and the performance verification is performed through real navigation experiments in real or test-bed environments.

In this paper, a wall climbing robot, called LAVAR, is developed, which is using an impeller for adhering. The adhesion mechanism of the robot consists of an impeller and two-layered suction seals which provide sufficient adhesion force for the robot body on the non smooth vertical wall and horizontal ceiling. The robot uses two driving-wheels and one ball-caster to maneuver the wall surface. A suspension mechanism is also used to overcome the obstacles on the wall surface. For its design, the whole adhering mechanism is analyzed and the control system is built up based on this analysis. The performances of the robot are experimentally verified on the vertical and horizontal flat surfaces.