The problem of the end-point control of long reach manipulator systems, consisting of a dexterous manipulator carried by deployable structures, is addressed. Such systems can be important where a manipulator must perform a task in a difficult to reach location. Power line maintenance systems and the Space Station Freedom’s external maintenance robot are examples. Their supporting deployable str...

This paper presents an obstacle avoidance method for discretely-actuated planar manipulators with a large number of serially connected modules. The method uses a direct combination of the manipulator workspace density functions and obstacle density maps to solve the inverse kinematics of the manipulator, thus avoiding the geometrical modelling of obstacles and the computation of the nearest poi...

This paper presents a motion planning method for mobile manipulators for which the base locomotion is less precise than the manipulator control. In such a case, it is advisable to move the base to discrete poses from which the manipulator can be deployed to cover a prescribed trajectory. The proposed method finds base poses that not only cover the trajectory but also meet constraints on a measu...

A robust control approach is proposed for a high speed manipulator using a hybrid computed torque control approach in the state space. The high-speed manipulator is driven by permanent magnet dc motors to track a trajectory in the joint space in the presence of disturbances. Tracking problem is analyzed in the state space where the completed models are considered for actuators. The proposed con...

This paper aims at studying the effect of uncertain parameters on a two-link planar manipulator using a fuzzy logic approach. The uncertain parameters are modeled as fuzzy variables and the dynamic simulation of the robot is performed using fuzzy dynamic analysis. Two case studies are considered to analyze the dynamic behavior of the robot manipulator: a) uncertain payload and b) uncertain payl...

A robust teleoperation controller design method for an underwater manipulator is proposed considering the master and the underwater slave separately. To achieve transparency and stability for a teleoperation of an underwater manipulator in unknown environments with time-varying uncertainties such as added mass, buoyancy, hydraulic drag and friction effect, an adaptive sliding mode control schem...

In this paper, kinematic modeling and singularity and stiffness analysis of a 3-d.o.f. redundant parallel manipulator have been elaborated in detail. It is known that, contrary to series manipulators, the forward kinematic map of parallel manipulators involves highly coupled non-linear equations, whose closed-form solution derivation is a real challenge. This issue is of great importance noting...

— This paper presents our approach to extending the niche of behavior-based robotics to manipulation. We use results from neuroscience to define the basic behaviors of the manipulator. Furthermore, we derive some qualitative design rules for the mechanics of the manipulator. With these principles, we have designed a first demo application: writing on a board with a mobile manipulator.

The main focus of this work is to perform the gravity balancing of a seven degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) hybrid manipulator. A hybrid manipulator is a combination of openand closed-loop chains and contains planar and spatial links. Gravity balancing is an important aspect for robotic manipulators, especially for serial manipulators, where with increase in number of links, the gravitational effect o...