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Title: Compliant control of constrained robot manipulators
Creator: Yoon, Choong Sup
Date: 1989
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Control of MSU jumping robot
Creator: Alsaedi, Emad
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The idea of Miniature jumping robots is taking exactly from the animal living around us. A gecko lizard is a perfect example for a jumping balancing Robot, in an experiment, it was seen how gecko lizard can balance landing using the moment of the tail. Another example is a falling cat midair self-righting. These miniature jumping robot are becoming widely used in real life. One cannot expect how useful to use such robot at times where human presence is at danger. Like in the case of wars or...
Show moreThe idea of Miniature jumping robots is taking exactly from the animal living around us. A gecko lizard is a perfect example for a jumping balancing Robot, in an experiment, it was seen how gecko lizard can balance landing using the moment of the tail. Another example is a falling cat midair self-righting. These miniature jumping robot are becoming widely used in real life. One cannot expect how useful to use such robot at times where human presence is at danger. Like in the case of wars or natural disaster (as in earth quakes or nuclear like disaster as Fukushima leaks in Japan). The MSU jumper robot is unique in terms of weight and size; however, there is some control problem in the case of landing procedure, as well as self-righting and maneuvering in midair. Designing a controller for MSU jumping robot is challenging, the controller has to response in half a second as the jumping period is close to 2 second, that short period made it almost impossible for the robot to resist uncertainties or unmolded dynamics, as well as changes in the mass of moment of inertia of the body due to change of body shape. We managed to add mini wings to the robot to prolong jumping period and the stabilize landing procedure, as well as to enable the robot to estimate the mass of moment of inertia for the body , and all of that for the controller at the tail to force the body to land on the desired edge. MSU jumper robot has swept greatly throughout robotics media and industry due to the tininess and light weight properties. A light weight that doesn't exceed 28 g and a maximum size of 6.5 cm is what made the robot special in its types of all jumping robots.
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Title: Dav : a humanoid platform and developmental learning with case studies
Creator: Zeng, Shuqing
Date: 2004
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Design and VLSI implementation of perceptive controller for robotic systems
Creator: Sun, Yu
Date: 2004
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Design paradigm for implementing robotic control algorithms in ASIC
Creator: Leung, Steven S., 1954-
Date: 1989
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Development of a position sensitive device and multi-position alignment control system for automated industrial robot calibration
Creator: Nieves-Rivera, Erick
Date: 2013
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: This dissertation proposes a novel calibration system capable of automatically calibrating industrial robots. Often, inaccurate assumptions about real links parameters or even small offsets exist in the individual robot joints that lead to errors in the internal kinematic model equation and, as a consequence, affect the accuracy of a robotic system. To solve this problem, the proposed approach introduces a completely new technique for industrial robot calibration. The proposed system consists...
Show moreThis dissertation proposes a novel calibration system capable of automatically calibrating industrial robots. Often, inaccurate assumptions about real links parameters or even small offsets exist in the individual robot joints that lead to errors in the internal kinematic model equation and, as a consequence, affect the accuracy of a robotic system. To solve this problem, the proposed approach introduces a completely new technique for industrial robot calibration. The proposed system consists of an industrial robot manipulator, a camera, a laser fixture attached to the robot tool center point (TCP), a PC-based interface, and a new position sensitive calibration device (PSCD). This wireless calibration device is comprised of two fixed position sensitive detectors (PSDs) tilted with an angle between them to reflect the laser line from one PSD to the other. Such a device is capable of feeding back the movement information needed to localize the TCP frame relative to the device frame. The new calibration approach is not only able to compute the joint offset parameters of the robot but is also capable of simultaneously calibrating the robot's workpiece relationship. It was also designed to be faster, simpler and cheaper than any other methods. Throughout this dissertation, the newly developed calibration device, the principle of our calibration system and the control approach needed to achieve automation of the entire system are presented and discussed. Finally, the feasibility of the overall calibration system including device hardware, software and calibration algorithms was demonstrated with experimental results.
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Title: Development of small biomimetic robotic fish with onboard fine-grained localization
Creator: Shatara, Stephan W.
Date: 2008
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Evaluation of applicators in robotics system for chest wall recurrence by FDTD simulation
Creator: Ding, Ruihua
Date: 2006
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Event-based multimedia synchronization with Internet telerobot
Creator: Song, BooHeon
Date: 2003
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Exploring joint-level control in evolutionary robotics
Creator: Moore, Jared M.
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "In this dissertation, we use computational evolution and physics simulations to explore both control and morphology in robotic systems. Specifically we investigate joint-level control strategies and their interaction with morphological elements." - Abstract.

Title: Interactive learning of verb semantics towards human-robot communication
Creator: She, Lanbo
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "In recent years, a new generation of cognitive robots start to enter our lives. Robots such like ASIMO, PR2, and Baxter have been studied and applied in education and service applications. Different from traditional industry robots doing specific repetitive tasks in a well controlled environment, cognitive robots must be able to work with human partners in a dynamic environment which is filled with uncertainties and exceptions. It is unlikely to pre-program every type of knowledge (e.g.,...
Show more"In recent years, a new generation of cognitive robots start to enter our lives. Robots such like ASIMO, PR2, and Baxter have been studied and applied in education and service applications. Different from traditional industry robots doing specific repetitive tasks in a well controlled environment, cognitive robots must be able to work with human partners in a dynamic environment which is filled with uncertainties and exceptions. It is unlikely to pre-program every type of knowledge (e.g., perceptual knowledge like different colors or shapes; action knowledge like how to complete a task) into the robot systems ahead of time. Just like how children learn from their parents, it's desirable for robots to continuously acquire knowledge and learn from human partners on how to handle novel and unknown situations. Driven by this motivation, the goal of this dissertation is to develop approaches that allow robots to acquire and refine knowledge, particularly, knowledge related to verbs and actions, through interaction/dialogue with its human partner. Towards this goal, this dissertation has made following contributions i . As a first step, we propose a goal state based verb semantics and develop a three-tier action/task knowledge representation. This representation on one hand supports the connection between symbolic representations of language and continuous sensori-motor representations of the robots; and on the other hand, supports the application of existing planning algorithms to address novel situations. Our empirical results have shown that, given this representation, the robot can immediately apply the newly learned action knowledge to perform actions under novel situations. Secondly, the goal state representation and the three-tier structure are integrated into a dialogue system on board of a SCHUNK robotic arm to learn new actions through human-robot dialogue in a simplified blocks world. For a novel complex action, the human can give an illustration through dialogue using robot's existing action knowledge. Comparing the environment changes before and after the action illustration, the robot can identify a goal state to represent the novel action, which can be immediately applied to new environments. Empirical studies have shown that action knowledge can be acquired by following human instructions. Furthermore, the results also demonstrate that step-by-step instructions lead to better learning performance compared to one-shot instructions. To solve the insufficiency issue of applying the single goal state representation in more complex domains (e.g., kitchen and living room), the single goal state is extended to a hierarchical hypothesis space to capture different possible outcomes of a verb action. Our empirical results demonstrate that the representation of hypothesis space, combined with the learned hypothesis selection algorithm, outperforms approaches using single hypothesis representation. Lastly, we address uncertainties in the environment for verb acquisition. Previous works rely on perfect environment sensing and human language understanding, which does not hold in real world situation. In addition, rich interactions between teachers and learners as observed in human teaching/learning have not been explored. To address these limitations, the last part presents a new interactive learning approach that allows robots to proactively engage in interaction with human partners by asking good questions to handle uncertainties of the environment. Reinforcement learning is applied for the robot to acquire an optimal policy for its question-asking behaviors by maximizing the long-term reward. Empirical results have shown that the interactive learning approach leads to more reliable models for grounded verb semantics, especially in the noisy environments."--Pages ii-iii.
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Title: Nanorobotic end-effectors : design, fabrication, and in situ characterization
Creator: Fan, Zheng (Of Michigan State University)
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Nano-robotic end-effectors have promising applications for nano-fabrication, nano-manufacturing, nano-optics, nano-medical, and nano-sensing; however, low performances of the conventional end-effectors have prevented the widespread utilization of them in various fields. There are two major difficulties in developing the end-effectors: their nano-fabrication and their advanced characterization in the nanoscale. Here we introduce six types of end-effectors: the nanotube fountain pen (NFP), the...
Show moreNano-robotic end-effectors have promising applications for nano-fabrication, nano-manufacturing, nano-optics, nano-medical, and nano-sensing; however, low performances of the conventional end-effectors have prevented the widespread utilization of them in various fields. There are two major difficulties in developing the end-effectors: their nano-fabrication and their advanced characterization in the nanoscale. Here we introduce six types of end-effectors: the nanotube fountain pen (NFP), the super-fine nanoprobe, the metal-filled carbon nanotube (m@CNT)-based sphere-on-pillar (SOP) nanoantennas, the tunneling nanosensor, and the nanowire-based memristor. The investigations on the NFP are focused on nano-fluidics and nano-fabrications. The NFP could direct write metallic "inks" and fabricating complex metal nanostructures from 0D to 3D with a position servo control, which is critically important to future large-scale, high-throughput nanodevice production. With the help of NFP, we could fabricate the end-effectors such as super-fine nanoprobe and m@CNT-based SOP nanoantennas. Those end-effectors are able to detect local flaws or characterize the electrical/mechanical properties of the nanostructure. Moreover, using electron-energy-loss-spectroscopy (EELS) technique during the operation of the SOP optical antenna opens a new basis for the application of nano-robotic end-effectors. The technique allows advanced characterization of the physical changes, such as carrier diffusion, that are directly responsible for the device's properties. As the device was coupled with characterization techniques of scanning-trasmission-electron-microscopy (STEM), the development of tunneling nanosensor advances this field of science into quantum world. Furthermore, the combined STEM-EELS technique plays an important role in our understanding of the memristive switching performance in the nanowire-based memristor. The developments of those nano-robotic end-effectors expend the study abilities in investigating the in situ nanotechnology, providing efficient ways in in situ nanostructure fabrication and the advanced characterization of the nanomaterials.
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Title: On robust tracking in uncertain systems : a variable structure approach
Creator: Choi, Seung-Bok
Date: 1986
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Optimal experiment design and system identification : human testing applications
Creator: Priess, Martin Cody
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "In this work, we demonstrate novel techniques for system identification and the optimization of experimental input sequences. The goal of these techniques is to extend traditional methods to the analysis of human motor control systems." - Abstract.

Title: Quantum optical communications system for micro robots
Creator: Lekki, John Daniel
Date: 2008
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Sensing and manipulation in a nano-bio environment using atomic force microscopy based robotic system
Creator: Li, Guangyong
Date: 2006
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Title: Teleoperation of mobile manipulators
Creator: Jia, Yunyi
Date: 2014
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Mobile manipulators provide larger working spaces and more flexibility than standard manipulators by introducing mobility. Through teleoperation, they can be applied to a variety of areas such as hazardous material handling, outer space exploration, searching and rescue, etc.Inspired by application requirements, there are four major challenges in the teleoperation of mobile manipulators including the modeling and control of mobile manipulators, teleoperation of multiple mobile manipulators,...
Show moreMobile manipulators provide larger working spaces and more flexibility than standard manipulators by introducing mobility. Through teleoperation, they can be applied to a variety of areas such as hazardous material handling, outer space exploration, searching and rescue, etc.Inspired by application requirements, there are four major challenges in the teleoperation of mobile manipulators including the modeling and control of mobile manipulators, teleoperation of multiple mobile manipulators, modeling the human teleoperator in teleoperation system and communications between the human teleoperator and mobile manipulators. Therefore, this study aims to address these challenges.For the modeling and control of mobile manipulators, the motion accuracy of the end-effector is a problem for the existing methods due to the system performance differences. To address this issue, we introduce a new control method with online motion distribution and coordination to improve the accuracy. In addition, a sensor-based redundancy resolution scheme is proposed to further improve the teleoperation efficiency.For the teleoperation of multiple mobile manipulators, the system stability under random communication delays and unexpected events is a major problem for the existing methods. To address this issue, we propose a non-time based teleoperation and coordination method. A non-time perceptive reference is designed as the new reference to replace the time in the system modeling and control. Through this design, the system stability under random communication delays and unexpected events could be ensured.For modeling the human teleoperator in teleoperation system, there are no existing models and the teleoperation efficiency and safety are always subject to the operation status of the teleoperator. To address this issue, we propose a concept named quality of teleoperator (QoT) to represent the teleoperator and incorporate it into the modeling and control of the teleoperation system. Through this design, the teleoperation efficiency and safety could be improved under various operation status of the teleoperator.For the communications between the human teleoperator and mobile manipulators, the existing methods of using joysticks are neither efficient nor intuitive. Therefore, we introduce the natural language as a new communication manner. However, the existing natural language control methods could not online handle unexpected events in the environment and robotic system. To address this issue, a new systematic natural language modeling and control method is designed to online handle such unexpected events.Finally, the proposed methods are all implemented on our developed mobile manipulators and the experimental results illustrate their effectiveness and advantages.
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Title: Towards Proprioceptive Grasping With Soft Robotic Hands
Creator: da Silva Pinto, Thassyo
Date: 2021
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Various robotic hands, gloves, and grippers have been developed for manufacturing, prosthetics, and rehabilitation. However, the use of rigid links and joints presents challenges in control and safe interactions with humans. The emerging field of soft robotics seeks to create machines that are soft, compliant, and capable of withstanding damage, wear and high stress. This dissertation is focused on advancing soft actuators, soft sensors, and perception for ultimately realizing proprioceptive...
Show moreVarious robotic hands, gloves, and grippers have been developed for manufacturing, prosthetics, and rehabilitation. However, the use of rigid links and joints presents challenges in control and safe interactions with humans. The emerging field of soft robotics seeks to create machines that are soft, compliant, and capable of withstanding damage, wear and high stress. This dissertation is focused on advancing soft actuators, soft sensors, and perception for ultimately realizing proprioceptive grasping with soft robotic hands.In this work, several types of soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs) have been tested, fabricated, and tested, including one embedded with 3D-printed conductive polylactic acid (CPLA) layer capable of stiffness tuning and shape modulation. A gripper made of two soft actuators has been prototyped to demonstrate grasping of objects of different sizes and shapes, with desired posture-holding capabilities. Carbon nanotube (CNT)-based flexible sensor arrays have been designed, fabricated, and integrated to SPAs to provide distributed strain measurements. The presented approach allows customized design of stretchable sensor arrays with varied size and shape. Simulation and experimentation have been performed in order to analyze the soft actuator deformation during bending, and to confirm the capability of the integrated sensor array for capturing the actuator deformation. 3D printing of touch and pressure sensors has been further investigated for potential use in robotic hands. In particular, a novel process has been introduced for producing soft conductors and pressure sensors, involving first 3D-printing microchannels in soft substrates and then filling the channel with liquid metal. With a PolyJet printer, functional straight microchannels have been fabricated with sizes down to 150 x 150 micrometers in the cross-section area. In addition, spiral-shaped pressure sensors have been developed with a cross-section size of 350 x 350 micrometers and overall thickness of 1.5 mm (50A and 70A Shore Hardness). Although the sensors require a relatively large pressure threshold to operate, they have shown the ability to withstand high pressures up to 1 MPa and thus have potential to be used in industrial applications among others. Finally, preliminary computational exploration of intelligent grasping has been performed. In particular, the classification of soft grasped objects has been examined through a neuroevolution process for artificial brains. Simulation with SOFA (Simulation Open Framework Architecture) has been conducted to produce the emulated contact force measurements, which have been used to train artificial neural networks, including Markov Brains from the Modular Agent-Based Evolver (MABE) platform, to properly classify the shape and stiffness of the grasped objects.
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