This paper presents an underactuated artificial hand intended for functional replacement of the natural hand in upper limb amputees. The natural hand has three basic functionalities: grasping, manipulation and exploration. To accomplish the goal of restoring these capabilities by implanting an artificial hand, two fundamental steps are necessary: to develop an artificial hand equipped with arti...

In this paper, we consider the regulation control problem for an underactuated overhead crane system. Motivated by recent passivitybased controllers for underactuated systems, we design several controllers that asymptotically regulate the planar gantry position and the payload angle. Specifically, utilizing LaSalle’s invariant set theorem, we first illustrate how a simple proportional–derivativ...

This paper considers the stabilization problem of Inertia Wheel Pendulum, a widely studied benchmark nonlinear system. It is a classical example of a flat underactuated mechanical system, for which the design of control law becomes a challenging task owing to its underactuated nature. A novel nonlinear controller design, fusing the recently introduced Dynamic Surface Control and the Control Lya...

Ball dribbling is a central element of basketball. One main challenge for realizing basketball robots is to stabilize periodic motion of the ball. The task is nontrivial due to the discrete-continuous nature of the corresponding dynamics. This paper proposes to add an elastic element to the manipulator so the ball can be controlled in a continuous-time phase instead of an intermittent contact. ...

This paper shows how to generate underactuated manipulators by substituting nonholonomic spherical pairs for (holonomic) spherical pairs in ordinary (i.e. not underactuated) manipulators. As a case study, an underactuated manipulator, previously proposed by one of the authors, is demonstrated to be generated, through this pair substitution from an inversion of the 6-3 fully parallel manipulator...

In recent years, researchers have been dedicated to the study of underactuated manipulators which have more joints than control actuators. In previous works, one always assumes that there is enough dynamic coupling between the active and the passive joints of the manipulator, for it to be possible to control the position of the passive joints via the dynamic coupling. In this work, the authors ...

The Controlled Lagrangian method is a branch of energy shaping methods that is designed to control underactuated mechanical systems. The method emp...

There has been an increasing interest in the study of underactuated robotics toward significant improvement of behavioral performances in robotic systems. The previous studies on underactuated robots have demonstrated energy efficient, maneuverable, and robust motion control by properly exploiting passive dynamics. Despite these fascinating characteristics in underactuated systems, however, the...

In recent years, researchers have been dedicated to the study of underactuated manipulators which have more joints than control actuators. In previous works, one always assumes that there is enough dynamic coupling between the active and the passive joints of the manipulator, for it to be possible to control the position of the passive joints via the dynamic coupling. In this work, the authors ...

Underactuated manipulation is the process of controlling several object degrees-of-freedom with fewer robot actuators. Underactuated manipulation allows us to build dexterous robots with only a few actuators. In this paper we explore the possibility of useful dynamic manipulation with only a single actuator. Our case study is a ball rolling in an asymmetrical bowl which can be accelerated along...