Much work in optimal control and inverse control has assumed that the controller has perfect knowledge of plant dynamics. However, if the controller is a human or animal subject, the subject's internal dynamics model may differ from the true plant dynamics. Here, we consider the problem of learning the subject's internal model from demonstrations of control and knowledge of task goals. Due to s...

Soft continuum robots are more and used in various applications due to the multiple advantages offered by properties of hyper-elastic soft materials, such as resilience, flexibility, etc. Despite all these essential that make good candidates for some real-life needs (form enclosure grasping, obstacle-free navigation, etc.), controlling their shape remains challenging because hyper-redundancies....

The design and analysis of a 4-DOF multi-link cable driven parallel mechanism is presented. In contrast to many existing cable driven parallel mechanism, the proposed manipulator’s rigid links are serially articulated. This design preserves the advantages associated with cabledriven parallel mechanisms, and introduces the advantages in having a serial kinematic structure. The kinematic and kine...

We introduce a novel method to build multiple local regression models based on the prototype vectors of the SOM network and other well-known vector quantization (VQ) algorithms. The resulting models are evaluated in the task of identifying the inverse dynamics of a heat exchanger data set. Additionally, we evaluate through statistical hypothesis testing the influence of the VQ algorithm on the ...

The continue-time unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is developed to estimate the state of a jet transport aircraft. The UKF is based on the nonlinear longitudinal aircraft equations of motion, and it is designed to provide estimates of horizontal and vertical atmospheric wind inputs. The optimal state and disturbance estimates are incorporated in feedback control laws based on the slowand fast-time...

This paper presents the modeling of the light-weight BioRob robot arm with series elastic actuation for simulation and controller design. We describe the kinematic coupling introduced by the cable actuation and the robot arm dynamics including the elastic actuator and motor and gear model. We show how the inverse dynamics model derived from these equations can be used as a basis for a position ...

Measuring biomechanical work performed by the body is critical for understanding muscle-tendon function, jointspecific contributions and energy-saving mechanisms during gait. Yet, we found that when we sum empirical jointand segment-level measures of work that they fail to capture substantial positive work performed by the body. For example, 25% of the total positive work that we know is perfor...