To be cost effective and highly precise, many industrial assembly robots have only four degrees of freedom (D.O.F. ) plus a binary pneumatic gripper. Such robots commonly permit parts to be rotated only about a vertical axis. However it is often necessary to reorient parts about other axes prior to assembly. In this paper we describe a way to orient parts about an arbitrary axis by introducing ...

In advanced robotics applications in unstructured environments (e.g. those foreseen in space) some degree of dexterity and autonomy is necessary in order to safely and successfully execute the required tasks. With this respect, besides the kinematic configuration, important aspects to be considered in the design of robotic end effectors are the sensorial equipment and proper control strategies....

AbstmctThis paper addresses a three-dimensional implementation that results in several separate manipulators, each with intermittent contact with a central object of known geometry, cooperatively manipulating the object to a desired new position and orientation. Rolling control of an object using redundant contact of several independent manipulators is made difficult by the hybrid nature of thi...

This work considers the failure tolerant operation of a kinematically redundant manipulator in an environment containing obstacles. In particular, the article addresses the problem of planning a collision-free path for a manipulator operating in a static environment such that the manipulator can reach its desired goal despite a single locked-joint failure and the presence of obstacles in the en...

This article presents two methods for selecting actuators based on the dynamic loading criteria which yield a manipulator with a desired level of dynamic performance. Here, dynamic performance is measured in terms of a robot’s acceleration and force capabilities, which describe its ability to accelerate the end-effector and to apply forces to the environment, given the limitations on its actuat...

This paper deals with a new planar parallel mechanism with variable actuation and its kinetostatic performance. A drawback of parallel mechanisms is the non homogeneity of kinetostatic performance within their workspace. The common approach to solve this problem is the introduction of actuation redundancy, that involves force control algorithms. Another approach, highlighted in this paper, is t...

I n this paper we describe and test how information from multiple sources can be combined into a robust visual seruoing system. The main objective is integration of visual cues to provide smooth pursuit in a cluttered environment using a minimum or no calibration. For that purpose, voting schema and fuzzy logic command fusion are investigated. It is shown that the integration permits detection ...

In this paper, the control of free-floating space manipulator systems with non-zero angular momentum (NZAM), for both motions in the joint and Cartesian space, is studied. Considering NZAM, dynamic models in the joint and Cartesian space are derived. It is shown that the NZAM has a similar result to the effect of gravity in terrestrial fixed base manipulators. Based on these similarities, the a...

This paper presents a sensitivity analysis of the Orthoglide, a 3-DOF translational Parallel Kinematic Machine. Two complementary methods are developed to analyze its sensitivity to its dimensional and angular variations. First, a linkage kinematic analysis method is used to have a rough idea of the influence of the dimensional variations on the location of the end-effector. Besides, this metho...

This paper considers the camera-space position and orientation regulation problem for the camera-in-hand problem via visual serving in the presence of parametric uncertainty associated with the robot dynamics and the camera system. Specifically, an adaptive robot controller is developed that forces the end-effector of a robot manipulator to move such that the position and orientation of an obje...