The generation of movements in closed kinematic chains as opposed to open kinematic chains is a challenging task because all participating joints have to be moved in a highly coordinated manner in order to avoid destructive tensions in the limb. In this paper we present a new decentral joint controller which uses low level interactions between a moving joint and its environment consisting of ne...

While bipedal walking robots developed recently are based on high-gain servo to planned trajectory, our purpose is to make a robot’s behavior more natural: exploiting useful feature of the dynamics of the body itself. A new concept for controlling humanoid robots, the global dynamics approach is proposed. This is to harness the robot body by applying control input intensively around critical po...

A recursive formulation of the dynamical equations of an articulated multibody system with flexible components is given in terms of efficient motion variables for elastic motion and hinge rotation about revolute, Hooke and spherical joints. We treat motion under external forces, as well as prescribed motion with internal loads calculation, and show computational efficiency of the formulation wi...

Any configuration of a chain of cubes can be transformed into any other while maintaining contact between adjacent cubes in the chain using a quadratic number of moves. We show that this result is also true in the more constrained setting of a “Kibble chain” where the cubes are threaded on an elastic string, and slits in the cubes allow limited turns at joints.

Functionality and design of a bionic robot arm consisting of three joints driven by elastic and compliant actuators derived from biologically inspired principles are presented. In the first design standard springs with linear characteristics are utilized in combination with electrical drives. Different control approaches for the bionic robot arm are presented, discussed and evaluation in numeri...

This paper presents both experimental and numerical studies on bolted glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) joints subjected to uniaxial tension different thermal conditions (?20 ?, 20 ? 60 ?). Laboratory tests are conducted obtain strength, elastic modulus deformation of the joints. The model is developed using discrete element method (DEM) that can predict not only above properties joints, bu...

The content of this paper describes the model and control of a elastic joint driven by fluidic muscles including the nonlinear behavior of the fluidic muscle, the valves and the joint dynamics. Such elastic joints have a lot advantages like passive compliance, low power to weight relation. The control of the joint is developed with the help of a professional software tool named EICASLAB which h...

Conventional models of bipedal walking generally assume rigid body structures, while elastic material properties seem to play an essential role in nature. On the basis of a novel theoretical model of bipedal walking, this paper investigate a simple model for biped robots which makes use of minimum control and elastic passive joints inspired from the structures of biological systems. The model i...

The setpoint regulation problem for robotic manipulators is a basic task that can be solved either by PID control or by model-based gravity compensation. These approaches are commonly applied both to rigid arms and to robots with flexible links and/or elastic joints. However, PID control requires fine and lengthy tuning of gains in order to achieve good performance over the whole workspace. Mor...

This paper puts forward a real-time angular tracking (motion capture) system for a low cost upper limb exosuit based on sensor fusion; which is integrated by an elastic sleeve-mitten, two inertial measurement units (IMU), two flex sensors and a wireless communication system. The device can accurately detect the angular position of the shoulder (flexion-extension, abduction-adduction and interna...