In this paper, we study the differential kinematics and the kineto-static manipulability indices of multiple cooperating robot arms, including active and passive joints. The kinematic manipulability indices are derived extending previous results on cooperating robots without passive joints. The force manipulability analysis for cooperative robot systems cannot be straightforwardly derived by “d...

This paper describes the mechanical configuration of a quadruped robot firstly. Each of the four legs consists of three rotary joints. All joints of the robot are actuated by linear hydraulic servo cylinders. Then it deduces the forward and inverse kinematic equations for four legs with D-H transformation matrices. Furthermore, it gives a composite foot trajectory composed of cubic curve and st...

This paper presents a novel design for a mobile robot based on the kinematics of parallel mechanisms. The robot consists of 3 legs, each equipped with an asynchronous driving unit. The legs are connected to the driving units with spherical joints and to the upper plate with a revolute joint. Three additional encoders, attached to the upper revolute joints provide redundant data. This data is us...

In this article, we address the problem of controlling unknown flexible-joint robots with unknown time-varying stiffness and damping parameters. We propose a Robust Direct Adaptive Fuzzy Control (RDAFC) strategy that accommodates the dynamics anonymity and joints stiffness/damping variations. The RDAFC strategy relies on the synergy of the concepts of fuzzy logic approximation and the Sliding M...

Serpentine robots are slender, multi-segmented vehicles designed to provide greater mobility than conventional wheeled or tracked robots. Serpentine robots are thus ideally suited for urban search and rescue, military intelligence gathering, and for surveillance and inspection tasks in hazardous and hard-to-reach environments. One such serpentine robot, developed at the University of Michigan, ...

This paper presents a computationally efficient method for the modeling of robot manipulators with flexible links and joints. This approach combines the Discrete Time Transfer Matrix Method with the Finite Segment Method, in which the flexible links are discretized by a number of rigid segments connected by torsion springs; and the flexibility of joints are modeled by torsion springs. The propo...

When developing a humanoid robot, the choice of the system driving its joints is of crucial importance for the robot’s robustness, technical reliability, ease of maintenance, as well as its degree of autonomy. Here, we present a novel, modular actuator system of the humanoid robot Myon. Both the concept of the actuator system and the composition of the individual modules which it consists of ar...

We describe a new Compliant Articulated Robot Leg, CARL, which we constructed as a prototype for an autonomous robot quadruped. The leg is designed for dynamic walking, trotting and bounding gaits, with an expected top speed of 3m=s. It is an anthropomorphic (articulated) 3 DOF design with revolute joints as opposed to prismatic joints for improved mobility, simplicity and low friction. It empl...

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 ...

In this paper, we developed two noble mechanisms for improving the motions of humanoid robots. The double spherical hip joint provides the equivalent function of waist joints without actually adding them. The backlush clutch is a new drive mechanism for knee joints of humanoid robots, which enables switching between drive and free modes. We developed a humanoid robot equipped with these two mec...