This paper presents mechanical design and control of a bio-inspired legged robot. To achieve a fast legged running mechanism, a novel linkage leg structure is designed based on hind legs of domestic cats. The skeletomuscular system and parallel leg movement of a cat are analyzed and applied to determine the link parameters. The hierarchical control architecture is designed according to the biological data to generate and modulate desired gaits. The effectiveness of the leg mechanism design and control is verified experimentally. The legged robot runs at a speed of 46 km/h, which is comparatively higher speed than other existing legged robots.

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.

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.

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, 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.

In this study, an anthropomorphic robot Hand, called “SKKU Hand III” is presented. The hand has thirteen DOF(Degree-Of-Freedom) and is designed based on the skeletal structure of the human hand. Each finger module(except thumb module) has three DOF and four joints with a saddle joint mechanism which has two DOF at the base joint. Two distal joints of the finger module are mechanically coupled by a timing belt and pulleys. The thumb module is composed of a finger module and an additional actuator, which makes it possible to realize the opposition between the thumb and the other fingers. In addition, the palm DOF of the human hand is mimicked with a spatial link mechanism between the index finger and the thumb. Thus, it can grasp objects more stably and more strongly. For the modularization of the robotic hand all the driving circuits are embedded in the hand, and only the communication lines supporting CAN protocol with DC power cable are given as an interface. Therefore, it is possible to apply it to any robot system the interface. To validate the feasibility of the SKKU Hand III, a series of the representative grasp experiments such as power, precision, intermediate grasp etc. are carried out with the object around us and its operation is demonstrated.

This paper proposes the trot gait pattern generation and online control methods for a quadruped robot to carry heavy loads and to move fast on uneven terrain. The trot pattern is generated from the frequency modulated pattern generation method based on the frequency modulated oscillator in order for the legged robots to be operated outdoor environment with the static and dynamic mobility. The efficiency and performance of the proposed method are verified through computer simulations and experiments using qRT-1/-2. In the experiments, qRT-2 which has two front legs driven by hydraulic linear actuators and two rear casters is used. The robot can trot at the speed up to 1.3 m/s on even surface, walk up and down the 20 degree inclines, and walk at 0.7 m/s on uneven surface. Also it can carry over 100 kg totally including 40 kg payload.