Industrial Robot: An International Journal

Pransky, Joanne

2015 Industrial Robot: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/IR-10-2014-0406

Purpose – This article, a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal , aims to impart the combined technological, business, and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding the evolution, commercialization, and challenges of bringing a technological invention to market. Design/methodology/approach – The interviewee is Dr Rodney Brooks, the Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab; Founder, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and Chairman of Rethink Robotics. Dr Brooks shares some of his underlying principles in technology, academia and business, as well as past and future challenges. Findings – Dr Brooks received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and a PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 1981. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT in 1984. He is also a Founder, Board Member and former CTO (1991-2008) of iRobot Corp (Nasdaq: IRBT). Dr Brooks is the former Director (1997-2007) of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He founded Rethink Robotics (formerly Heartland Robotics) in 2008. Originality/value – While at MIT, in 1988, Dr Brooks built Genghis, a hexapodal walker, designed for space exploration (which was on display for ten years in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.). Genghis was one of the first robots that utilized Brooks’ pioneering subsumption architecture. Dr Brooks’ revolutionary behavior-based approach underlies the autonomous robots of iRobot, which has sold more than 12 million home robots worldwide, and has deployed more than 5,000 defense and security robots; and Rethink Robotics’ Baxter, the world’s first interactive production robot. Dr Brooks has won the Computers and Thought Award at the 1991 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the 2008 IEEE Inaba Technical Award for Innovation Leading to Production, the 2014 Robotics Industry Association’s Engelberger Robotics Award for Leadership and the 2015 IEEE Robotics and Automation Award.

Bogue, Robert

2015 Industrial Robot: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/IR-08-2014-0379

Purpose – This article aims to provide details of recent robotic exoskeleton developments and applications. Design/methodology/approach – Following an introduction, this article first considers some of the technological issues associated with an exoskeleton design. It then discusses military developments, industrial load-carrying applications and uses in healthcare. Progress in thought-controlled exoskeletons is discussed briefly, and finally, concluding comments are drawn. Findings – This article shows that, while military interests continue, the dominant application is to restore or enhance mobility to individuals suffering from disabilities or injuries. An emerging use is to increase the strength and endurance of industrial workers. The majority are lower-limb devices, although some full-body exoskeletons have been developed, and most rely on battery-powered electric motors to create motion. Reflecting the anticipated growth in applications, exoskeletons are now available from, or under development by, a growing number of commercial organisations. Originality/value – This provides an insight into the latest developments in robotic exoskeletons and their applications.

Madsen, Ole ; Bøgh, Simon ; Schou, Casper ; Andersen, Rasmus Skovgaard ; Damgaard, Jens Skov ; Pedersen, Mikkel Rath ; Krüger, Volker

2015 Industrial Robot: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/IR-09-2014-0390

Purpose – The purpose of this study has been to evaluate the technology of autonomous mobile manipulation in a real world industrial manufacturing environment. The objective has been to obtain experience in the integration with existing equipment and determine key challenges in maturing the technology to a level of readiness suitable for industry. Despite much research within the topic of industrial mobile manipulation, the technology has not yet found its way to the industry. To mature the technology to a level of readiness suitable for industry real-world experience is crucial. This paper reports from such a real-world industrial experiment with two mobile manipulators. Design/methodology/approach – In the experiment, autonomous industrial mobile manipulators are integrated into the actual manufacturing environment of the pump manufacturer Grundfos. The two robots together solve the task of producing rotors; a task constituted by several sub-tasks ranging from logistics to complex assembly. With a total duration of 10 days, the experiment includes workspace adaptation, safety regulations, rapid robot instruction and running production. Findings – With a setup time of less than one day, it was possible to program both robots to perform the production scenario in collaboration. Despite the success, the experiment clearly demonstrated several topics in need of further research before the technology can be made available to the industry: robustness and cycle time, safety investigations and possibly standardization, and robot and workstation re-configurability. Originality/value – Despite the attention of research around the world, the topic of industrial mobile manipulation has only seen a limited number of real-world integrations. This work reports from a comprehensive integration into a real-world running production and thus reports on the key challenges identified from this integration.

Konno, Masashi ; Mizota, Yutaka ; Nakamura, Taro

2015 Industrial Robot: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/IR-10-2014-0401

Purpose – This paper aims to develop a wave-transmitting mechanism for a travelling-wave-type omnidirectional mobile robot. Existing omnidirectional mechanisms are prone to movement instability because they establish a small contact area with the ground. The authors have developed a novel omnidirectional mobile robot that achieves stable movement by a large ground-contact area. The proposed robot moves by a wave-transmitting mechanism designed for this purpose. Design/methodology/approach – To achieve stable movement, a spiral-type travelling-wave-propagation mechanism that mimics the locomotion mechanism of a snail was developed. The mechanism was applied to an omnidirectional mobile robot. Findings – The practicality of magnetic attraction was verified in experiments of the wave-transmitting mechanism. Moreover, omnidirectional movement was confirmed in a robot prototype adopting this mechanism. Research limitations/implications – The proposed robot will eventually be deployed in human spaces such as factories and hospitals. A mechanically improved version of the robot will be evaluated in load-driving experiments and equipped with control systems. Originality/value – This paper proposes an omnidirectional mobile robot with a large ground contact area that moves by continuous travelling waves. The practicability of this mechanism was experimentally confirmed, and a prototype robot achieved omnidirectional movement.

Bao, Guanjun ; Li, Kun ; Xu, Sheng ; Huang, Pengcheng ; Wu, Luan ; Yang, Qinghua

2015 Industrial Robot: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/IR-08-2014-0376

Purpose – This paper aims to avoid the precise modeling and controlling problems of rigid structures of hand recovery device, by proposing a hand rehabilitator based on flexible pneumatic actuator with its safety and adaptability. Design/methodology/approach – The hand rehabilitator is designed based on a flexible pneumatic bending joint. The recovery training program for an injured finger is developed via forearm sEMG (surface electromyogram) sampling, analysis, classification and motion consciousness identification. Four typical movement models of the index finger and middle finger were defined and the corresponding sEMG signals were sampled. After simulation and comparative analysis, autoregressive (AR) model back propagation (BP) network was selected for sEMG analysis and hand recovery planning because of its best recognition performance. A verification test was designed and the results showed that the soft hand rehabilitator and recovery conception are feasible. Findings – AR model BP network can identify the index finger and middle finger movement intention via an sEMG analysis. The developed flexible pneumatic hand rehabilitator is safe and suitable for finger recovering therapy. Research limitations/implications – Because of the limitation of experimental samples, the prototype rehabilitator of this work may lack generalizability for other situations. Therefore, for further study and application, systematic structure revising, experiments, data and training are necessary to improve the performance. Practical implications – The paper includes implications for the development and application of a new style, safe and dexterous hand rehabilitator. Originality/value – The paper tries a new approach to design a safe, flexible and easily controlled hand rehabilitator.

Jiang, Xianzhi ; Wang, Zenghuai ; Zhang, Chao ; Yang, Liangliang

2015 Industrial Robot: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/IR-07-2014-0374

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to enhance the control performance of the robotic arm by the controller of fuzzy neural network (FNN). Design/methodology/approach – The robot system has characters of high order, time delay, time variation and serious nonlinearity. The classical PID controller cannot achieve satisfactory performance in control of such a complex system. This paper combined the fuzzy control with neural networks and established the FNN controller and applied it in control of the robot. Findings – The experimental results showed that the FNN controller had excellent performances in position control of the rehabilitation robotic arm such as fast response, small overshoot and small vibration. Research limitations/implications – This work is focused on the static FNN algorithm by updating the second and fifth layers of the membership functions. The performance can be improved further if the third layer (reasoning layer) can be updated online. Originality/value – Based on a hierarchical structure of the FNN controller, this paper designed the FNN controller and applied it in control of the rehabilitation robot driven by pneumatic muscles.

Joubair, Ahmed ; Zhao, Long Fei ; Bigras, Pascal ; Bonev, Ilian

2015 Industrial Robot: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/IR-09-2014-0396

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a calibration method developed to improve the accuracy of a six degrees-of-freedom medical robot. The proposed calibration approach aims to enhance the robot’s accuracy in a specific target workspace. A comparison of five observability indices is also done to choose the most appropriate calibration robot configurations. Design/methodology/approach – The calibration method is based on the forward kinematic approach, which uses a nonlinear optimization model. The used experimental data are 84 end-effector positions, which are measured using a laser tracker. The calibration configurations are chosen through an observability analysis, while the validation after calibration is carried out in 336 positions within the target workspace. Findings – Simulations allowed finding the most appropriate observability index for choosing the optimal calibration configurations. They also showed the ability of our calibration model to identify most of the considered robot’s parameters, despite measurement errors. Experimental tests confirmed the simulation findings and showed that the robot’s mean position error is reduced from 3.992 mm before calibration to 0.387 mm after, and the maximum error is reduced from 5.957 to 0.851 mm. Originality/value – This paper presents a calibration method which makes it possible to accurately identify the kinematic errors for a novel medical robot. In addition, this paper presents a comparison between the five observability indices proposed in the literature. The proposed method might be applied to any industrial or medical robot similar to the robot studied in this paper.

Jia, Bingxi ; Liu, Shan ; Liu, Yi

2015 Industrial Robot: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/IR-09-2014-0392

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a more efficient strategy, which is easier to implement, i.e. the engineer can directly operate the target object without the robot to do a demonstration, and the manipulator is regulated to track the trajectory using vision feedback repetitively. Generally, the applications of industrial robotic manipulators are based on teaching playback strategy, i.e. the engineer should directly operate the manipulator to perform a demonstration and then the manipulator uses the recorded driving signals to perform repetitive tasks. Design/methodology/approach – In the teaching process, the engineer grasps the object with a camera on it to do a demonstration, during which a series of images are recorded. The desired trajectory is defined by the homography between the images captured at current and final poses. Tracking error is directly defined by the homography matrix, without 3D reconstruction. Model-free feedback-assisted iterative learning control strategy is used for repetitive tracking, where feed-forward control signal is generated by iterative learning control strategy and feedback control signal is generated by direct feedback control. Findings – The proposed framework is able to perform precise trajectory tracking by iterative learning, and is model-free so that the singularity problem is avoided which often occurs in conventional Jacobean-based visual servo systems. Besides, the framework is robust to image noise, which is shown in simulations and experiments. Originality/value – The proposed framework is model-free, so that it is more flexible for industrial use and easier to implement. Satisfactory tracking performance can be achieved in the presence of image noise. System convergence is analyzed and experiments are provided for evaluation.

Wang, Haixia ; Lu, Xiao ; Hu, Zhanyi ; Li, Yuxia

2015 Industrial Robot: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/IR-06-2014-0352

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a fully automatic calibration method for hand-eye serial robot system is presented in this paper. The so-called “fully automatic” is meant to calibrate the robot body, the hand-eye relation, and the used measuring binocular system at the same time. Design/methodology/approach – The calibration is done by controlling the joints to rotate several times one by one in the reverse order (i.e. from the last one to the first one), and simultaneously take pictures of the checkerboard patterns by the stereo camera system attached on the end-effector, then the whole robot system can be calibrated automatically from these captured images. In addition, a nonlinear optimization step is used to further refine the calibration results. Findings – The proposed method is essentially based on an improved screw axis identification method, and it needs only a mirror and some paper checkerboard patterns without resorting to any additional costly measuring instrument. Originality/value – Simulations and real experiments on MOTOMAN-UP6 robot system demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

Chen, Gang ; Zhang, Wei-gong

2015 Industrial Robot: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/IR-06-2014-0353

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a prototype simulation system for driving performance of an electromagnetic unmanned robot applied to automotive test (URAT) to solve that it is difficult and dangerous to online debug control program and to quickly obtain test vehicle dynamic performance. Design/methodology/approach – The driving performance of the electromagnetic URAT can be evaluated by the prototype simulation system. The system can simulate various driving conditions of test vehicles. An improved vehicle longitudinal dynamics model matching to the electromagnetic URAT is established. The proposed model has good real-time, and it is easy to implement. The displacement of throttle mechanical leg, brake mechanical leg, clutch mechanical leg and shift mechanical arm is used for the system input. Test vehicle speed and engine speed are used for the system output, and they are obtained by the computation of the established vehicle longitudinal dynamics model. Findings – Driving conditions simulation test and vehicle emission test are performed using a Ford Focus car. Simulation and experiment results show that the proposed prototype simulation system in the paper can simulate the driving conditions of actual vehicles, and the performance that electromagnetic URAT drives an actual vehicle is evaluated by the simulation system. Research limitations/implications – Future research will focus on improving the real time of the proposed simulation system. Practical implications – The autonomous driving performance of electromagnetic URAT can be evaluated by the proposed prototype simulation system. Originality/value – A prototype simulation system for driving performance of an electromagnetic URAT based on an improved vehicle longitudinal dynamics model is proposed in this paper, so that it can solve the difficulty and danger of online debugging control program, quickly obtaining the test vehicle performance.