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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering
Belief-Space Planning For Resourceful Manipulation And Mobility, Dirk Ruiken
Belief-Space Planning For Resourceful Manipulation And Mobility, Dirk Ruiken
Doctoral Dissertations
Robots are increasingly expected to work in partially observable and unstructured environments. They need to select actions that exploit perceptual and motor resourcefulness to manage uncertainty based on the demands of the task and environment. The research in this dissertation makes two primary contributions. First, it develops a new concept in resourceful robot platforms called the UMass uBot and introduces the sixth and seventh in the uBot series. uBot-6 introduces multiple postural configurations that enable different modes of mobility and manipulation to meet the needs of a wide variety of tasks and environmental constraints. uBot-7 extends this with the use …
A Continous Rotary Actuation Mechanism For A Powered Hip Exoskeleton, Matthew C. Ryder
A Continous Rotary Actuation Mechanism For A Powered Hip Exoskeleton, Matthew C. Ryder
Masters Theses
This thesis presents a new mechanical design for an exoskeleton actuator to power the sagittal plane motion in the human hip. The device uses a DC motor to drive a Scotch yoke mechanism and series elasticity to take advantage of the cyclic nature of human gait and to reduce the maximum power and control requirements of the exoskeleton. The Scotch yoke actuator creates a position-dependent transmission that varies between 4:1 and infinity, with the peak transmission ratio aligned to the peak torque periods of the human gait cycle. Simulation results show that both the peak and average motor torque can …
Ubot-7: The Design Of A Compliant Dexterous Mobile Manipulator, Jonathan Cummings
Ubot-7: The Design Of A Compliant Dexterous Mobile Manipulator, Jonathan Cummings
Masters Theses
This thesis presents the design of uBot-7, the latest version of a dexterous mobile manipulator. This platform has been iteratively developed to realize a high performance-to-cost dexterous whole body manipulator with respect to mobile manipulation. The semi-anthropomorphic design of the uBot is a demonstrated and functional research platform for developing advanced autonomous perception, manipulation, and mobility tasks. The goal of this work is to improve the uBot’s ability to sense and interact with its environment in order to increase the platforms capability to operate dexterously, through the incorporation of joint torque feedback, and safely, through the implementation of passive and …