关键词： robotics   education   realistic simulators   sensors   actuators   physics engine  

摘要： This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) about realistic simulators that can be applied in an educational robotics context. These simulators must include the simulation of actuators and sensors, the ability to simulate robots and their environment. During this systematic review of the literature, 559 articles were extracted from six different databases using the Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcomes, Context (PICOC) method. After the selection process, 50 selected articles were included in this review. Several simulators were found and their features were also analyzed. As a result of this process, four realistic simulators were applied in the review's referred context for two main reasons. The first reason is that these simulators have high fidelity in the robots' visual modeling due to the 3D rendering engines and the second reason is because they apply physics engines, allowing the robot's interaction with the environment.

摘要： Presents the introductory editorial for this issue of the publication.

关键词： agriculture   automated cultivation   mobile manipulation   orchard tasks   pome fruit  

摘要： The cultivation of apples and pears in orchards consists of several tasks that still demand much human labor. The cost of this skilled labor increases while the number of competent seasonal workers becomes insufficient. These facts are a threat to the fruit industry. To find a solution, this paper addresses current as well as future automation possibilities for the main orchard tasks as a profitable alternative to human labor. Besides an activity research in pome fruit orchards, this paper contains an overall review of the research and developments that have been performed to automate each major activity (e.g., pruning, thinning, spraying, harvesting and mobile navigating) in the cultivation of pome fruit. These tasks are individually evaluated on feasibility and profitability of the developed automations. Finally, this paper concludes that, despite the large amount of research, almost no fully automated and cost-efficient solution has been developed. A possible option to increase the viability of the prototypes might be the simplification of the tree structures, and consequently the orchard architecture, to make it "robot-ready." Another option in this perspective is combining several techniques, for accomplishing individual tasks, in one multipurpose robot platform. As a result, the usability and efficiency of the robot increases.

ISBN: (纸本)9787030691842

摘要： 本书全面深入地阐述了旋量理论与李群、李代数理论及其关联关系，反映了李群、李代数与机器人机构学相结合的最新理论研究成果。全书共9章，第一章为绪论。第二章到第四章主要讲述了旋量、李群、李代数等数学理论，揭示了刚体位移的固有特性以及与有限位移旋量和李群的内在统一性。第五章介绍了旋量理论在机器人运动学的应用实例。为了更充分地展示现代数学在机器人学研究中的重要意义，根据作者在机器人学理论上的研究进展，第六章到第八章分别阐述了机器人的质心运动学、多足机器人运动规划及动力学。第九章介绍了李群李代数和旋量理论在柔性机器人机构学方面的拓展应用。

关键词： Risk   Ethics   Robotics   Autonomous system   Long-term care   Systematic review  

摘要： The dwindling informal care support structure for the older population and the shortage of skilled nursing care staff propelled the rise of robotics and autonomous systems as potential solutions to meet the rising demands in long-term care. However, the nascent development in the governance of their applications could predispose older people to the negative ramifications of technological risks and ethical issues. This systematic review maps out four technological risks and five ethical issues in the deployment of robotics and autonomous systems in long-term care. Safety, privacy, liability, and adverse employment consequences to the existing nursing care workers were identified as major technological risks;while loss of autonomy, loss of human interaction and social connectedness, objectification and infantilisation, deception and social justice were identified as five major ethical issues related to the deployment of robotics and autonomous systems in long-term care. This review also identified antagonistic interactions between some of the technological risks and ethical issues that could offset each other. Findings from the review have implications for advancing knowledge on the governance of robotics in long-term care. Policy formulations and implementations would need to account for intricate issues that could arise from technological risks, ethical issues and their paradoxical interactions.

关键词： Neural adaptive control   observer-based control   prescribed performance   PID2 control   robot manipulator  

摘要： This article proposes a novel prescribed performance-based neural adaptive control scheme for robot manipulators including motor dynamics under model uncertainties without velocity, acceleration, and input current measurements. The prescribed performance function approach is used to transform a constrained tracking problem of the robot model including motor dynamics into an unconstrained third-order error model in Euler-Lagrange form which inherits all properties of the robot dynamics. Then, a projection-type neural adaptive PID2 controller (a PID controller with the second-order derivative) in conjunction with a velocity-acceleration observer is proposed. Lyapunov's direct method is used to prove that the tracking and state observation errors are semiglobally uniformly ultimately bounded and converge to a small ball around the origin with a prescribed overshoot/undershoot, convergence rate, and final tracking accuracy. Finally, simulation, experimental results on a SCARA robot and comparative studies verify that the proposed controller is effective for the joint position trajectory tracking of robot manipulators in the industrial automation with minimum measurement and hardware requirements.

关键词： Surveys  

摘要： Accurate models of mechanical system dynamics are often critical for model-based control and reinforcement learning. Fully data-driven dynamics models promise to ease the process of modeling and analysis, but require considerable amounts of data for training and often do not generalize well to unseen parts of the state space. Combining data-driven modeling with prior analytical knowledge is an attractive alternative as the inclusion of structural knowledge into a regression model improves the model's data efficiency and physical integrity. In this article, we survey supervised regression models that combine rigid-body mechanics with data-driven modeling techniques. We analyze the different latent functions (such as kinetic energy or dissipative forces) and operators (such as differential operators and projection matrices) underlying common descriptions of rigid-body mechanics. Based on this analysis, we provide a unified view on the combination of data-driven regression models, such as neural networks and Gaussian processes, with analytical model priors. Furthermore, we review and discuss key techniques for designing structured models such as automatic differentiation. © 2021 The Authors. GAMM - Mitteilungen published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.

摘要： Presents the President’s message for this issue of the publication.

关键词： Robots   Service robots   Software engineering   Robot sensing systems   Containers   Industrial facilities   Packaging   Automation  

摘要： Illustration Through a Bimanual Manipulation Case Study

关键词： marine biomimetics   bibliographic statistics   energy provision   biomaterials   locomotor designs   optimal energy consumption  

摘要： Mechatronic and soft robotics are taking inspiration from the animal kingdom to create new high-performance robots. Here, we focused on marine biomimetic research and used innovative bibliographic statistics tools, to highlight established and emerging knowledge domains. A total of 6980 scientific publications retrieved from the Scopus database (1950-2020), evidencing a sharp research increase in 2003-2004. Clustering analysis of countries collaborations showed two major Asian-North America and European clusters. Three significant areas appeared: (i) energy provision, whose advancement mainly relies on microbial fuel cells, (ii) biomaterials for not yet fully operational soft-robotic solutions;and finally (iii), design and control, chiefly oriented to locomotor designs. In this scenario, marine biomimicking robotics still lacks solutions for the long-lasting energy provision, which presently hinders operation autonomy. In the research environment, identifying natural processes by which living organisms obtain energy is thus urgent to sustain energy-demanding tasks while, at the same time, the natural designs must increasingly inform to optimize energy consumption.