Robotics Laboratory Research Articles

Bilateral reaching deficits after unilateral perinatal ischemic stroke: a population-based case-control study

BackgroundDetailed kinematics of motor impairment of the contralesional (“affected”) and ipsilesional (“unaffected”) limbs in children with hemiparetic cerebral palsy are not well understood. We aimed to 1) quantify the kinematics of reaching in both arms of hemiparetic children with perinatal stroke using a robotic exoskeleton, and 2) assess the correlation of kinematic reaching parameters with clinical motor assessments.MethodsThis prospective, case-control study involved the Alberta Perinatal Stroke Project, a population-based research cohort, and the Foothills Medical Center Stroke Robotics Laboratory in Calgary, Alberta over a four year period. Prospective cases were collected through the Calgary Stroke Program and included term-born children with magnetic resonance imaging confirmed perinatal ischemic stroke and upper extremity deficits. Control participants were recruited from the community. Participants completed a visually guided reaching task in the KINARM robot with each arm separately, with 10 parameters quantifying motor function. Kinematic measures were compared to clinical assessments and stroke type.ResultsFifty children with perinatal ischemic stroke (28 arterial, mean age: 12.5 ± 3.9 years; 22 venous, mean age: 11.5 ± 3.8 years) and upper extremity deficits were compared to healthy controls (n = 147, mean age: 12.7 ± 3.9 years). Perinatal stroke groups demonstrated contralesional motor impairments compared to controls when reaching out (arterial = 10/10, venous = 8/10), and back (arterial = 10/10, venous = 6/10) with largest errors in reaction time, initial direction error, movement length and time. Ipsilesional impairments were also found when reaching out (arterial = 7/10, venous = 1/10) and back (arterial = 6/10). The arterial group performed worse than venous on both contralesional and ipsilesional parameters. Contralesional reaching parameters showed modest correlations with clinical measures in the arterial group.ConclusionsRobotic assessment of reaching behavior can quantify complex, upper limb dysfunction in children with perinatal ischemic stroke. The ipsilesional, “unaffected” limb is often abnormal and may be a target for therapeutic interventions in stroke-induced hemiparetic cerebral palsy.

Control and Stability Evaluation of the Bipedal Walking Robot AnyWalker

In the laboratory of robotics and mechatronics of the Kuban State University, a walking non-anthropomorphic robot has been developed, capable of overcoming obstacles exceeding the size of the robot. The robot has additional internal degrees of freedom, responsible for the compensation of deflections (the dynamic stabilization system). The article presents the results of the calculation of the stability zones in the frontal plane of the robot with and without a stabilization system.

Achieving Reproducibility and Closed-Loop Automation in Biological Experimentation with an IoT-Enabled Lab of the Future

A robotic cloud laboratory driven by a state-of-the-art unified laboratory operating system integrates automated hardware, humans, and sensors. This lab of the future system enables researchers to transparently and collaboratively create, optimize, and organize biological experiments to achieve more reproducible results, perform around-the-clock experimentation, and more efficiently navigate the vast parameter space of biology.

Explicit dynamics of redundant parallel cable robots

Precise model-based control of parallel robots necessitates an analytically accurate and consolidated model of the robotic platform. Lack of accuracy in modeling causes lots of dynamic uncertainties. This fact can result in higher control gains and efforts. Furthermore, imposing modification for optimization purposes is implausible without the derivation of an exact model. Hence, in this paper an elaborative kinematical and dynamical model of redundant cable-driven parallel robots is studied. In fact, a general procedure for modeling of cable-actuated parallel robots is presented to tackle down the difficulties for model-based control. The presented dynamic modeling approach rigorously enumerates the kinematics of robot winches and pulleys. The intrinsic behavior of cables is represented with a linear spring and damper having variable mass and constant density in the workspace. To this end, sagging in cables is neglected as a computationally intractable effect with insignificant impact on robot’s dynamics. Next, model validation is carried out within an experimental study of a redundant cable-driven parallel robot, the RoboCab which is designed and manufactured in Advanced Robotics and Automated Systems (ARAS) Lab. Experimental results reveal the merits and capabilities of proposed model to capture the explicit dynamics of robot. Results also demonstrate the high rate of flexibility and applicability of model for dealing with diverse control applications.

Parliament of things and enactment of third entities: object-subject/subject-object encounters from cuban urban gardens to United States’ robotic labs

ABSTRACTThings/objects/materials/nonhumans are integral components of everyday material ecology of humans. The nonhuman elements contribute to sociality, socialization and configuration of political subjectivities. We explore the dynamics of subject-object relationships via ethnographies of urban gardens and robotic labs. We trace the dynamics of man-plant relationships in urban gardens of Cuba and engineer-humanoid relationships in the United States to highlight how these relationships inform the politics and ethical complexity of human-centred ecologies. This collaborative effort offers two different case studies to broaden the notions of materiality while critiquing the relationality bound between subjects and objects instead of exploring the emergent properties of their relationship. Our ethnographies are a form of hands-on anthropology that outlines the third entity that emerges from the subject-object relationship and configures the material ecology of everyday lives. Our discussion contributes to the complexities of politics of everyday life and to the challenges of our contemporary era by highlighting the importance of details of everyday lives and how we craft relationships with nonhuman people.

Embodied Cognitive Robotics and the learning of sensorimotor schemes

Embodied Cognitive Robotics focuses its attention on the design of artificial agents capable of performing cognitive tasks autonomously. A central issue in this consists in studying process by which agents learn through interaction with their environment. Embodied Cognitive Robotics aims to implement models of cognitive processes coming from Cognitive Sciences. The guidelines in this research area are a direct response to the shortcomings of Classical Artificial Intelligence, where high-level tasks and behaviors were studied. This article describes the work carried out in the Cognitive Robotics Laboratory at the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (UAEM). Our work is based on the concept of low-level sensorimotor schemes coded by Internal Models, thus falling as a matter of course within the tenets of Embodied Cognition, particularly with the idea that cognition must be understood as occurring in agents that have a body with which they interact in a specific environment. It is through this interaction that learning emerges laying the ground for cognitive processes. Our research includes theoretical work laying the foundations of Embodied Cognitive Robotics, as well as work with artificial and with natural agents.

Sample preparation in foodomic analyses.

Representative sampling and adequate sample preparation are key factors for successful performance of further steps in foodomic analyses, as well as for correct data interpretation. Incorrect sampling and improper sample preparation can be sources of severe bias in foodomic analyses. It is well known that both wrong sampling and sample treatment cannot be corrected anymore. These, in the past frequently neglected facts, are now taken into consideration, and the progress in sampling and sample preparation in foodomics is reviewed here. We report the use of highly sophisticated instruments for both high-performance and high-throughput analyses, as well as miniaturization and the use of laboratory robotics in metabolomics, proteomics, peptidomics, and genomics.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEVELOPING SINGLE PAGE APPLICATION AND TRADITIONAL WEB APPLICATION BASED ON MECHATRONICS ROBOT LABORATORY ONAFT APPLICATION

Today most of desktop and mobile applications have analogues in the form of web-based applications. With evolution of development technologies and web technologies web application increased in functionality to desktop applications. The Web application consists of two parts of the client part and the server part. The client part is responsible for providing the user with visual information through the browser. The server part is responsible for processing and storing data.MPA appeared simultaneously with the Internet. Multiple-page applications work in a "traditional" way. Every change eg. display the data or submit data back to the server. With the advent of AJAX, MPA learned to load not the whole page, but only a part of it, which eventually led to the appearance of the SPA. SPA is the principle of development when only one page is transferred to the client part, and the content is downloaded only to a certain part of the page, without rebooting it, which allows to speed up the application and simplify the user experience of using the application to the level of desktop applications.Based on the SPA, the Mechatronics Robot Laboratory ONAFT application was designed to automate the management process. The application implements the client-server architecture. The server part consists of a RESTful API, which allows you to get unified access to the application functionality, and a database for storing information. Since the client part is a spa, this allows you to reduce the load on the connection to the server and improve the user experience

Concordance between physiological arousal and emotion expression during fear in young children with autism spectrum disorders.

This study aimed to measure emotional expression and physiological arousal in response to fear in 21 children with autism spectrum disorders (43–75 months) and 45 typically developing children (41–81 months). Expressions of facial and bodily fear and heart rate arousal were simultaneously measured in response to a remote controlled robot (Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery). Heart rate analyses revealed a main effect of task from baseline to fear (p < 0.001, ), no interaction effect and no effect for group. In addition, children with autism spectrum disorder showed intact facial and bodily expressions of fearful affect compared to typically developing children. With regard to the relationship between expression and arousal, the results provided evidence for concordance between expression and arousal in typically developing children (r = 0.45, n = 45, p < 0.01). For children with autism spectrum disorder, no significant correlation was found (r = 0.20, n = 21, p = 0.38). A moderation analysis revealed no significant interaction between expression and arousal for children with and without autism spectrum disorder (F(1, 62) = 1.23, p = 0.27, ), which might be the result of limited power. The current results give reason to further study concordance between expression and arousal in early autism spectrum disorder. Discordance might significantly impact social functioning and is an important topic in light of both early identification and treatment.

Development of robotic mobile platform with the universal chassis system

The problem of stabilizing the position of mobile devices is extremely relevant at the modern level of technology development. This includes the problem of stabilizing aircraft and stabilizing the pitching of ships. In the laboratory of robotics and mechatronics of the Kuban State University, a robot is developed. The robot has additional internal degrees of freedom, responsible for compensating for deflections - the dynamic stabilization system.

Not too Far from the Tree

This article explores the concept of robotic harvesting and use of computer, sensors, and artificial intelligence in the field of harvesting. More powerful computers, better sensors, and improved artificial intelligence promise to make machines competitive with human laborers for picking the apple harvest. Israel-based FFRobotics is one of the two companies racing to commercialize the world’s first mechanical apple picker. FFRobotics plan to test their apple-picking robot on Washington’s 2018 harvest, which runs from mid-August through mid-November. Modern orchard designs also allow engineers to build simpler apple-picking systems, according to Amir Degani, founder of the Civil, Environmental, and Agricultural Robotics Lab at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. Degani advised with FFRobotics on developing its robotic arm. FFRobotics is still struggling with whether to go with open- or closed-loop controller. The open-loop system recognizes a specific fruit and sends the gripper to that location. If a strong wind moves the apple left or right, the gripper does not follow. The closed-loop system tracks the movement of the fruit by distinctive points on the apple’s face as guides and adjusts the arm as it moves closer to the apple. While closed-loop systems are more effective, they are also too expensive.

Numerical Modelling for Optimization of Fibres Winding Process of Manufacturing Technology for the Non-Circular Aerospaces Frames

This article deals with the issue of mathematical calculating the trajectory of the end-effector of an industrial robot in the manufacture of aerospace composites. Robots are used to define the winding orientation of the fibre strands on a non-bearing 3D core. The 3D core is attached to the robot-end-effector and is led through a fibre-processing head according to a suitably defined robot trajectory during winding of the fibre on the core. The quality of the composite depends greatly on the correct winding angles of the fibres on the frame and on the homogeneity of the individual winding layers. The implementation of these two conditions is related to determining the correct trajectory of the industrial robot, which is part of the composite production technology. The numerical modelling of a passage of the on-bearing 3D core through a fibre-processing head is described in the article. Differential evolution algorithm and matrix calculus are applied to the numerical calculation of optimized robot-end-effector trajectory to achieve optimal angles of windings of fibres on the frame. The numerical calculations of the trajectory of the robot-end-effector were used for verified for the calculated trajectory of the robot-end-effector in the real conditions of robotic laboratory of department of machinery construction.

Development and experiment of the Internet-based telesurgery with MicroHand robot

Robot-assisted telesurgery can perform complex surgical manipulations from remote locations. Against the requirements of remote controlling for minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery robot, a prototype telesurgery system integrated on the existing “MicroHand S” robot was built. The prototype worked with the Internet, and a telesurgery communication protocol was set up based on Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. The stereo images of laparoscopy were transmitted by a hardware-based H.264 encoder/decoder. A demonstration environment of robot-assisted remote minimally invasive surgery between the medical robot laboratory of Tianjin University and the visual surgery laboratory of the PLA Rocket Force General Hospital, which is about 150 km away, was set up. Control signal and laparoscope image transmission test between these two places were conducted. After the pegboard task and knot-tying task of phantom training, the first remote gall bladder removal surgery on the sow of China was successfully performed, on the basis of remote surgery robot system integration. The experimental results show that the developed prototype telesurgery system has enough remote control performance and operability for telesurgery.

Developing a UV-Curable, Environmentally Benign and Degradable Elastomer for Soft Robotics

ABSTRACTThis paper introduces preliminary work on a UV-curable, environmentally benign and degradable elastomer, poly(glycerol sebacate itaconate), or PGSI, for use in soft robotics. A one-pot, solvent-free synthesis route using safe and inexpensive chemical reagents was developed to enable easy adoption into soft robotics labs. Material characterization of non-aged PGSI samples gave: ultimate tensile strength (UTS) ranging from 134 to 193 kPa with moduli ranging from 57 to 131 kPa and elongations at break ranging from 105 to 137 % (12 samples from 6 batches tested), and resilience values ranging from 73 to 82 % (3 samples from 3 batches tested). FTIR analysis showed a possible decrease in carbon-carbon double bonds after UV curing, evidencing a decrease in itaconic acid methylene groups from photoinitiated free radical cross-linking. NMR on the pre-polymer suggested incorporation of itaconic acid into the main polymer chain and evidence of heterogeneity of the polymer backbone resulting from glycerol bonding. An example molded soft pocket pneumatic actuator is created and briefly characterized. With further development, PGSI can be a degradable material to incorporate into temporary soft robots.

研究グループ紹介：東京電機大学工学部 電子システム工学科 協調ロボティクス（五十嵐）研究室

研究グループ紹介：東京電機大学工学部 電子システム工学科 協調ロボティクス（五十嵐）研究室

Robotics for soft skills training

Abstract Robotics is a powerful tool in education and it has gained a notable impact in the field of teaching computer science, engineering, math, physics and similar. As educational robotics laboratories stimulate many different abilities in students, such as problem solving and group working, it is possible to use robotics to promote soft skills as well. Soft skills are necessary to complement hard skills to build the 21st century professionalism, so it seems relevant to start promoting these skills as soon as possible. In this paper, we describe a lab for primary and first grade secondary schools in which robotics is employed to train soft skills in an informal context.

Indicators for the use of robotic labs in basic biomedical research: a literature analysis.

Robotic labs, in which experiments are carried out entirely by robots, have the potential to provide a reproducible and transparent foundation for performing basic biomedical laboratory experiments. In this article, we investigate whether these labs could be applicable in current experimental practice. We do this by text mining 1,628 papers for occurrences of methods that are supported by commercial robotic labs. Using two different concept recognition tools, we find that 86%–89% of the papers have at least one of these methods. This and our other results provide indications that robotic labs can serve as the foundation for performing many lab-based experiments.

The Art of Failure in Robotics: Queering the (Un)Making of Success and Failure in the Companion Robot Laboratory

This article investigates an emerging class of contemporary machines: the robot companion. It is introduced as a robot that will accompany ‘us’ in ‘our’ human everyday lives. This article analyzes one example of how robot companionship is realized while querying how this realization might imply a change in how ‘we’ conceive of human/machine relations. Drawing on central insights into the making of the humanoid Armar, the author develops an approach to emerging human/machine relations through affects, more precisely through the affective strategies and affective labors taking place in the robotics laboratory. She furthermore suggests taking a posthumanist perspective on the analysis, which entails becoming attentive to the intra-active co-production between human and machine. Importantly, this also allows her to tweak the powerful differentiation between success and failure at work in this specific setting, the robotics laboratory. How can ‘we’ rethink human/machine relations of humanlike interaction through queering success and failure at the robot/human interface? Finally, the author suggests establishing an understanding of laboratory work on the project of the humanlike companion that takes into account the queering potential of failure – centrally by emphasizing the interweaving of knowing and affects, rather than neglecting their connection. At stake seems to be the possibility to develop visions of how to turn the capitalist endeavor of increasing rationalizations of ‘human everyday lives’ into a more responsible and accountable practice of technologization that takes into account the largely neglected dimensions of human/machine relations beyond the success/failure binary.

Web Environment for Programming and Control of a Mobile Robot in a Remote Laboratory

Remote robotics laboratories have been successfully used for engineering education. However, few of them use mobile robots to to teach computer science. This article describes a mobile robot Control and Programming Environment (CPE) and its pedagogical applications. The system comprises a remote laboratory for robotics, an online programming tool, and a virtual learning environment. It allows experiments with a mobile robot to be carried out, tested and validated remotely, using a simple graphic interface via web browser, without additional software installation on the user's computer. Students can control and manipulate the robot with simple commands without worrying about hardware details or use C/C++ programming language to develop complex programs. The robot has been built with inexpensive components and has sensors that enable its use in several experiments. CPE can be used in contextualized teaching in various subjects of computer science, both in class and at distance. A practical application of the whole system using CPE, introducing programming concepts, is also described in this paper. The initial assessment of the environment as an educational tool shows high levels of interest among our students, an improvement in their academic scores, and potential for application in the context of computing education, when properly introduced as a learning tool.

Automatic graph based spatiotemporal extrinsic calibration of multiple Kinect V2 ToF cameras

Abstract This paper presents a novel technique for the automatic calibration of motion capture systems composed of multiple Time of Flight cameras (ToF) or any equivalent device able to provide 3D point clouds together with chromatic information. The calibration procedure is designed to be simple, fast and unsupervised: a colored sphere moved freely by hand is used as calibration tool. Three elements in particular distinguish the method we propose from other state of the art solutions: it takes into account and propagates measurement uncertainties, it allows the identification and recovery of systematic time delays in camera synchronization, it optimize the extrinsic parameters by means of a graph based approach. A widely used ToF, Microsoft Kinect V2, was used for the comparison with state of the art multi-ToF calibration techniques. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method is the most accurate both in terms of shape reconstruction and spatial consistency. Furthermore, the experimental results underlined that the application of the global graph optimization over a more standard couple-based unweighed matching achieves a higher accuracy in the assessment of the extrinsic parameters. Thus enabling the reduction of both systematic errors and data dispersion in 3D point clouds of reference shapes. The comparison among acquisition systems composed of 3 and 6 devices underlined that graph optimization becomes relevant when the number of devices grows. Taking into account several 3D configurations calibrated with the proposed method, it was assessed that the uncertainty of the extrinsic parameters is generally lower than 2 mm and 1 0 − 2 radiants, 0.6°. The resulting dense 3D reconstruction of objects, both static and in motion, achieved experimental errors lower than to 10 mm, approximately half of other state of the art methods, and, in first approximation, homogeneous for the entire monitored area. The software developed can be found at the site of the MIRo lab (Measurement Instrumentation and Robotics lab) at link 1 under the Creative Commons Attribution conditions.