Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Autonomous Mobility And Manipulation Of A 9-Dof Wmra, William Garrett Pence

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The wheelchair-mounted robotic arm (WMRA) is a 9-degree of freedom (DoF) assistive system that consists of a 2-DoF modified commercial power wheelchair and a custom 7-DoF robotic arm. Kinematics and control methodology for the 9-DoF system that combine mobility and manipulation have been previously developed and implemented. This combined control allows the wheelchair and robotic arm to follow a single trajectory based on weighted optimizations. However, for the execution of activities of daily living (ADL) in the real-world environment, modified control techniques have been implemented.

In order to execute macro ADL tasks, such as a "go to and pick up" …

Exploring The Human Interactivity With A Robot To Obtain The Fundamental Properties Of Materials, William L. Christian

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research studies the way in which humans and robots interact with each other. When two humans are working together through a set of robotic devices, do they tend to work together or fight with each other more? In which Cartesian direction do they have the most difficulty? Does fighting drastically affect the performance of the team? Finally, what measures can be taken to promote better cooperation between humans and robots to ultimately allow humans to work just as comfortably with a robotic partner as with a human partner? This research answers these questions and provides an analysis of human-robot …