关键词： INTELLECTUAL property   ROBOTICS research   PATENT laws & legislation  

摘要： An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the fundamental issues of context of moral order structuring society, the challenges of fair access and application of patent laws in human enhancement technologies.

关键词： Esophagus   Robotic surgery   Minimally invasive esophagectomy   Ivor-Lewis   Esophagectomy   Transhiatal esophagectomy  

摘要： Robot-assisted surgery has the advantages of a three-dimensional view, versatility of instruments and better ergonomics. It allows fine dissection and difficult anastomoses in deep fields. Based on our experience, we try to define what are the main contributions of robotics to minimally invasive esophagectomy. FromDecember 2009 to July 2012, we performed 24 minimally invasive esophagectomies (9 transhiatal, 5 Ivor-Lewis and 10 three-field), 16 of them robotically (8, 5 and 3, respectively). Eighteen patients (18/24 = 75 %) received neoadjuvant therapy. Nine patients (9/24 = 37.5 %) had symptomatic complications: 4 anastomotic leaks treated conservatively, one staple failure of the gastric plasty needing reoperation, one biliary peritonitis secondary to a gangrenous cholecystitis, one intrathoracic gastric migration after the only nonresectable case, one chylothorax and one patient with major cardiopulmonary complications. Themedian number of lymph nodes harvested was 12 +/- 7. Median length of stay was 14 +/- 13.5 days. Thirty-day mortality was nil. Complications were not related to the robot itself but to the complexity of both the technique and the patient. Although we found no advantages for the use of robotics during threefield minimally invasive esophagectomy, robotic mediastinal dissection during transhiatal esophagectomy can be performed safely under direct vision. Moreover, hand-sewn robotic-assisted technique in the prone position is promising and maybe the simplest way to carry out thoracic anastomosis during Ivor-Lewis esophagectomy

关键词： Damage recovery   evolutionary algorithm   fault tolerance   hexapod locomotion   learning   long-term autonomy   resilience   transferability  

摘要： Damage recovery is critical for autonomous robots that need to operate for a long time without assistance. Most current methods are complex and costly because they require anticipating potential damage in order to have a contingency plan ready. As an alternative, we introduce the T-resilience algorithm, a new algorithm that allows robots to quickly and autonomously discover compensatory behavior in unanticipated situations. This algorithm equips the robot with a self-model and discovers new behavior by learning to avoid those that perform differently in the self-model and in reality. Our algorithm thus does not identify the damaged parts but it implicitly searches for efficient behavior that does not use them. We evaluate the T-resilience algorithm on a hexapod robot that needs to adapt to leg removal, broken legs and motor failures;we compare it to stochastic local search, policy gradient and the self-modeling algorithm proposed by Bongard et al. The behavior of the robot is assessed on-board thanks to an RGB-D sensor and a SLAM algorithm. Using only 25 tests on the robot and an overall running time of 20 min, T-resilience consistently leads to substantially better results than the other approaches.

摘要： Background: Obtaining atomic-scale information about large-amplitude conformational transitions in proteins is a challenging problem for both experimental and computational methods. Such information is, however, important for understanding the mechanisms of interaction of many proteins. Methods: This paper presents a computationally efficient approach, combining methods originating from robotics and computational biophysics, to model protein conformational transitions. The ability of normal mode analysis to predict directions of collective, large-amplitude motions is applied to bias the conformational exploration performed by a motion planning algorithm. To reduce the dimension of the problem, normal modes are computed for a coarse-grained elastic network model built on short fragments of three residues. Nevertheless, the validity of intermediate conformations is checked using the all-atom model, which is accurately reconstructed from the coarse-grained one using closed-form inverse kinematics. Results: Tests on a set of ten proteins demonstrate the ability of the method to model conformational transitions of proteins within a few hours of computing time on a single processor. These results also show that the computing time scales linearly with the protein size, independently of the protein topology. Further experiments on adenylate kinase show that main features of the transition between the open and closed conformations of this protein are well captured in the computed path. Conclusions: The proposed method enables the simulation of large-amplitude conformational transitions in proteins using very few computational resources. The resulting paths are a first approximation that can directly provide important information on the molecular mechanisms involved in the conformational transition. This approximation can be subsequently refined and analyzed using state-of-the-art energy models and molecular modeling methods.

摘要： Background: Many proteins tune their biological function by transitioning between different functional states, effectively acting as dynamic molecular machines. Detailed structural characterization of transition trajectories is central to understanding the relationship between protein dynamics and function. Computational approaches that build on the Molecular Dynamics framework are in principle able to model transition trajectories at great detail but also at considerable computational cost. Methods that delay consideration of dynamics and focus instead on elucidating energetically-credible conformational paths connecting two functionally-relevant structures provide a complementary approach. Effective sampling-based path planning methods originating in robotics have been recently proposed to produce conformational paths. These methods largely model short peptides or address large proteins by simplifying conformational space. Methods: We propose a robotics-inspired method that connects two given structures of a protein by sampling conformational paths. The method focuses on small-to medium-size proteins, efficiently modeling structural deformations through the use of the molecular fragment replacement technique. In particular, the method grows a tree in conformational space rooted at the start structure, steering the tree to a goal region defined around the goal structure. We investigate various bias schemes over a progress coordinate for balance between coverage of conformational space and progress towards the goal. A geometric projection layer promotes path diversity. A reactive temperature scheme allows sampling of rare paths that cross energy barriers. Results and conclusions: Experiments are conducted on small-to medium-size proteins of length up to 214 amino acids and with multiple known functionally-relevant states, some of which are more than 13 angstrom apart of each-other. Analysis reveals that the method effectively obtains conformational paths connecting

关键词： 动力学分析   拉格朗日功能平衡法   虚拟样机仿真  

摘要： 针对TPR120码垛机器人的结构特点,运用朗格朗日功能平衡法进行动力学理论分析。利用Solidworks和ADAMS软件建立码垛机器人参数化的虚拟样机模型,进行动力学仿真。仿真结果表明,TPR120机器人具有良好的动力学性能,能够满足实际作业的需要。

关键词： 机器人   纠偏   行为   技术   学会   家用型   卷心菜   沙拉  

摘要： [导读]很多人幻想，当家用型机器人得到普及的时候，能在清晨睡梦中，就有机器帮佣在厨房里为你切一盘早餐沙拉——不过，万一它程序错乱，认为床上那一颗才更像是卷心菜，该怎么办？

关键词： 下肢外骨骼康复机器人   BP神经网络   Matlab   SimMechanics   Solidworks   逆动力学  

摘要： 针对下肢外骨骼康复机器人的灵敏度放大控制需要精确逆动力学模型的问题,通过Solidworks软件建立精确的三维实体模型,联合Matlab/SimMechanics建立下肢外骨骼康复机器人的动力学模型,以角度、角速度和角加速度作为输入信号,输出信号为髋、膝关节力矩,进行逆动力学仿真分析。将仿真后的输入输出数据利用BP神经网络进行训练并获得外骨骼逆动力学动态数学模型。仿真结果表明,该方法可以获得下肢外骨骼康复机器人精确的模型,并为进一步的实现外骨骼的灵敏度放大控制提供保证。

关键词： 无刷直流电机   换相转矩脉动   Z源网络   系统仿真  

摘要： 无刷直流电机换相转矩脉动的存在影响了其传动效果。提出了一种新的控制电珞拓扑，使用Z源直流变换器，在换相对调整逆变器母线电压来抑制转矩脉动，通过开关选择电路决定电源电压或者Z原直流变换器输出电压作力电机逆变器直流母绒的输入电压。简要分析了换相转矩脉动产生的原因，介绍了通过增加前级直流变换器抑制换相转矩脉动的新方法。在MATLAB／Simulink环境下构建了无刷直流电机换相转矩脉动抑制仿真模型，对提出的电路拓扑在不同的电路参数下进行了仿真和分析。仿真实验表明，该电路在高速以及低速段转矩脉动抑制效果均较为显著，转矩脉动可减少到平均转矩的8％以下，并且能适当提高电机平均输出转矩。

关键词： 码垛机器人局部闭链轨迹规划   动力学优化设计  

摘要： 提出一种4自由度含局部闭链式码垛机器人动力学优化设计方法。在建立其刚体动力学模型的基础上,提出在目标轨迹及确定运动规律下,以机器人大臂与小臂关节驱动力矩基于目标轨迹上的最大值最小作为动力学优化目标。在此基础上,构造有约束的多目标优化问题,并利用理想点法将该多目标优化问题转化成单目标优化问题加以解决。工程实例证明利用所提方法优化后得到的机器人尺度参数,能够使机器人在目标轨迹上的动力学性能明显改善,大臂与小臂关节驱动力矩峰值降幅分别为9.782%和8.207%,说明优化方法合理、有效。