Two different electro-biological signal based Interfaces for impaired people were developed: EMG and EEG based. Such interfaces present like main characteristics relatively simple acquisition and processing systems, which need of few hardware and software resources, so that they are computational and financial low cost solutions. Both interfaces have been applied to robotic systems (emulating a...

In this paper, off-the-shelf algorithms f o r force/torque control are used in the context of mobile manipulation (i.e. coordinated mot ion of a mobile robot base and the a r m mounted o n top of it). In particular, the task of opening a door is studied. To make the solution robust, as f e w assumptions as possible are made. B y using relaxation of forces as the basic level of control, more com...

Hydrodynamics of the manipulator mounted on the vehicle are poorly known and time-varying. Furthermore, its motion is disturbed by the vehicle motion and current. This paper presents a non-regressor based adaptive control scheme with a disturbance observer for tracking the trajectory of underwater mobile platform-mounted manipulators. The presented control system does not require any informatio...

In assistive robotics, a manipulator arm constitutes one possible solution for restoring some manipulation functions to victims of upper limb disabilities. The aim of this paper is to present a global strategy of approach of an assistive mobile manipulator (manipulator arm mounted on a mobile base). A manipulability criterion is defined to deal with the redundancy of the system. The aim is to k...

The development of a practical mobile robot system for mechanization of humanitarian demining tasks such as sensing/verification and/or clearance of anti-personnel landmines is close to be completed. The system proposed by Hirose group at Tokyo Tech is a simple but effective solution that consists of a pantographic weight-balanced manipulator mounted on top of a mobile platform. A practical and...

Manipulation is a key capability for mobile robots to perform a greater variety of useful tasks. In this paper, we consider mobile robots equipped with low degree-of-freedom “palm manipulators.” The advantage of using this sort of nonprehensile (i.e. nongrasping) manipulator is its simplicity and versatility. Although in general multiple robots may be needed, the initial work described in this ...

The stabilization to a desired pose of a nonholonomic mobile robot carrying a manipulator arm, based on sensory data provided by a camera mounted on the end-e ector of the arm, is considered. Instances of this problem occur in practice during docking or parallel parking maneuvers of such vehicles. The visual data obtained as the camera tracks a target of known geometry are used to implement a c...

The present paper shows a systematic approach to modeling and control mobile manipulators that transforms the problem to the modeling of a stationary manipulator stationary with nonholonomic kinematic constraints on the joints. The task-space control consists in an internal compensator of the dynamics of the mobile manipulator and an external proportional–derivative (PD) control with feed-forwa...

A mobile manipulator is a robotic system consisting of a robotic manipulator mounted onto a mobile base. This greatly extends the workspace of the robotic manipulator and allows it to perform more tasks. However, combining both systems increases the complexity of the control task as well as introducing additional controller tasks such as coordination of motion, where executing the task can invo...

Mobile robotic manipulators can augment the strength and dexterity of human operators in unstructured environments. Here, the control system for a six degree-of-freedom heavy-lift mobile manipulator for lifting and inserting payloads on the deck of a ship is described. The robotic hardware and the application present several control challenges, including structural resonances, high joint fricti...