http://www.hindawi.com The latest articles from Hindawi Publishing Corporation © 2013 , Hindawi Publishing Corporation . All rights reserved. Thu, 11 Apr 2013 11:52:43 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2013/126570/ The goal of this paper is to analyze the static stability of a computational architecture, based on the Passive Motion Paradigm, for coordinating the redundant degrees of freedom of a humanoid robot during whole-body reaching movements in bipedal standing. The analysis is based on a simulation study that implements the Functional Reach Test, originally developed for assessing the danger of falling in elderly people. The study is carried out in the YARP environment that allows realistic simulations with the iCub humanoid robot. Jacopo Zenzeri, Dalia De Santis, Vishwanathan Mohan, Maura Casadio, and Pietro Morasso Copyright © 2013 Jacopo Zenzeri et al. All rights reserved. Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:25:25 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2013/256364/ The authors propose a comparison between two force-position controllers with gravity compensation simulated on the DEXTER bioinspired robotic arm. The two controllers are both constituted by an internal proportional-derivative (PD) closed-loop for the position control. The force control of the two systems is composed of an external proportional (P) closed-loop for one system (P system) and an external proportional-integrative (PI) closed-loop for the other system (PI system). The simulation tests performed with the two systems on a planar representation of the DEXTER, an eight-DOF bioinspired arm, showed that by varying the stiffness of the environment, with a correct setting of parameters, both systems ensure the achievement of the desired force regime and with great precision the desired position. The two controllers do not have large differences in performance when interacting with a lower stiffness environment. In case of an environment with greater rigidity, the PI system is more stable. The subsequent implementation of these control systems on the DEXTER robotic bioinspired arm gives guidance on the design and control optimisation of the arms of the humanoid robot named SABIAN. Giovanni Gerardo Muscolo, Kenji Hashimoto, Atsuo Takanishi, and Paolo Dario Copyright © 2013 Giovanni Gerardo Muscolo et al. All rights reserved. Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:22:44 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2013/735958/ This paper presents novel fourth- and sixth-order polynomials to solve the problem of joint-space trajectory generation with a via point. These new polynomials use a single-polynomial function rather than two-polynomial functions matched at the via point as in previous methods. The problem of infinite spikes in jerk is also addressed. Robert L. Williams II Copyright © 2013 Robert L. Williams. All rights reserved. Tue, 19 Feb 2013 15:25:05 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2013/483095/ Dynamic and unstructured multiple cooperative autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) missions are highly complex operations, and task allocation and path planning are made significantly more challenging under realistic underwater acoustic communication constraints. This paper presents a solution for the task allocation and path planning for multiple AUVs under marginal acoustic communication conditions: a location-aided task allocation framework (LAAF) algorithm for multitarget task assignment and the grid-based multiobjective optimal programming (GMOOP) mathematical model for finding an optimal vehicle command decision given a set of objectives and constraints. Both the LAAF and GMOOP algorithms are well suited in poor acoustic network condition and dynamic environment. Our research is based on an existing mobile ad hoc network underwater acoustic simulator and blind flooding routing protocol. Simulation results demonstrate that the location-aided auction strategy performs significantly better than the well-accepted auction algorithm developed by Bertsekas in terms of task-allocation time and network bandwidth consumption. We also demonstrate that the GMOOP path-planning technique provides an efficient method for executing multiobjective tasks by cooperative agents with limited communication capabilities. This is in contrast to existing multiobjective action selection methods that are limited to networks where constant, reliable communication is assumed to be available. Yueyue Deng, Pierre-Philippe J. Beaujean, Edgar An, and Edward Carlson Copyright © 2013 Yueyue Deng et al. All rights reserved. Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:31:51 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2013/692838/ In postestimation problem for space robot, photogrammetry has been used to determine the relative pose between an object and a camera. The calculation of the projection from two-dimensional measured data to three-dimensional models is of utmost importance in this vision-based estimation however, this process is usually time consuming, especially in the outer space environment with limited performance of hardware. This paper proposes a computationally efficient iterative algorithm for pose estimation based on vision technology. In this method, an error function is designed to estimate the object-space collinearity error, and the error is minimized iteratively for rotation matrix based on the absolute orientation information. Experimental result shows that this approach achieves comparable accuracy with the SVD-based methods; however, the computational time has been greatly reduced due to the use of the absolute orientation method. Xiang Wu and Ning Wu Copyright © 2013 Xiang Wu and Ning Wu. All rights reserved. Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:41:25 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2013/723535/ The energy of a space station is a precious resource, and the minimization of energy consumption of a space manipulator is crucial to maintain its normal functionalities. This paper first presents novel gaits for space manipulators by equipping a new gripping mechanism. With the use of wheels locomotion, lower energy demand gaits can be achieved. With the use of the proposed gaits, we further develop a global path planning algorithm for space manipulators which can plan a moving path on a space station with a minimum total energy demand. Different from existing approaches, we emphasize both the use of the proposed low energy demand gaits and the gaits composition during the path planning process. To evaluate the performance of the proposed gaits and path planning algorithm, numerous simulations are performed. Results show that the energy demand of both the proposed gaits and the resultant moving path is also minimum. Wing Kwong Chung and Yangsheng Xu Copyright © 2013 Wing Kwong Chung and Yangsheng Xu. All rights reserved. Mon, 31 Dec 2012 18:00:32 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/512616/ Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (NOTES) involves accessing the abdominal cavity via one of the bodies’ natural orifices, for example, mouth, anus, or vagina. This new surgical procedure is very appealing from patients’ perspectives because it eliminates completely abdominal wall aggression and promises to reduce postoperative pain, in addition to all other advantages brought by laparoscopic surgery. However, the constraints imposed by both the mode of access and the limited technology currently available make NOTES very challenging for the surgeons. Redesign of the instruments is imperative in order to make this emerging operative access safe and reproducible. In this paper, we survey on the state-of-the-art devices used in NOTES and introduce both the flexible instruments based on improvement of current endoscopic platforms and the revolutionary concept of robotic platforms based on the convergence of communication and micromechatronics technologies. The advantages and limitations of each category are addressed. Potential solutions are proposed to improve the existing designs and develop robust and stable robotic platforms for NOTES. Xiaona Wang and Max Q.-H. Meng Copyright © 2012 Xiaona Wang and Max Q.-H. Meng. All rights reserved. Mon, 31 Dec 2012 17:11:27 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/694673/ Fault-tolerant control design of wheeled planetary rovers is described. This paper covers all steps of the design process, from modeling/simulation to experimentation. A simplified contact model is used with a multibody simulation model and tuned to fit the experimental data. The nominal mode controller is designed to be stable and has its parameters optimized to improve tracking performance and cope with physical boundaries and actuator saturations. This controller was implemented in the real rover and validated experimentally. An impact analysis defines the repertory of faults to be handled. Failures in steering joints are chosen as fault modes; they combined six fault modes and a total of 63 possible configurations of these faults. The fault-tolerant controller is designed as a two-step procedure to provide alternative steering and reuse the nominal controller in a way that resembles a crab-like driving mode. Three fault modes are injected (one, two, and three failed steering joints) in the real rover to evaluate the response of the nonreconfigured and reconfigured control systems in face of these faults. The experimental results justify our proposed fault-tolerant controller very satisfactorily. Additional concluding comments and an outlook summarize the lessons learned during the whole design process and foresee the next steps of the research. Alexandre Carvalho Leite, Bernd Schäfer, and Marcelo Lopes de OLiveira e Souza Copyright © 2012 Alexandre Carvalho Leite et al. All rights reserved. Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:01:31 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/412816/ The developments of medical practices and medical technologies have always progressed concurrently. The relatively recent developments in endoscopic technologies have allowed the realization of the “minimally invasive” form of surgeries. The advancements in robotics facilitate precise surgeries that are often integrated with medical image guidance capability. This in turn has driven the further development of technology to compensate for the unique complexities engendered by this new format and to improve the performance and broaden the scope of the procedures that can be performed. Medical robotics has been a central component of this development due to the highly suitable characteristics that a robotic system can purport, including highly optimizable mechanical conformation and the ability to program assistive functions in medical robots for surgeons to perform safe and accurate minimally invasive surgeries. In addition, combining the robot-assisted interventions with touch-sensing and medical imaging technologies can greatly improve the available information and thus help to ensure that minimally invasive surgeries continue to gain popularity and stay at the focus of modern medical technology development. This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of robotic systems for minimally invasive and noninvasive surgeries, precise surgeries, diagnoses, and their corresponding technologies. Abbi Hamed, Sai Chun Tang, Hongliang Ren, Alex Squires, Chris Payne, Ken Masamune, Guoyi Tang, Javad Mohammadpour, and Zion Tsz Ho Tse Copyright © 2012 Abbi Hamed et al. All rights reserved. Sun, 23 Dec 2012 11:44:56 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/932305/ Increasing demands on the productivity of complex systems, such as manufacturing machines and their steadily growing technological importance will require the application of new methods in the product development process. A smart machine can make decisions about the process in real-time with plenty of adaptive controls. This paper shows the simulation based mechatronic model of a complex system with a better understanding of the dynamic behavior and interactions of the components. This offers improved possibilities of evaluating and optimizing the dynamic motion performance of the entire automated system in the early stages of the design process. Another effect is the growing influence of interactions between machine components on achievable machine dynamics and precision and quality of components. The examples cited in this paper, demonstrate the distinguishing feature of mechatronic systems through intensive integration. The case studies also show that it will no longer be sufficient to focus solely on the optimization of subsystems. Instead it will be necessary to strive for optimization of the complete system. The interactions between machine components, the influence of the control system and the machining process will have to be considered during the design process and the coordination of feed drives and frame structure components. Devdas Shetty, Lou Manzione, and Ahad Ali Copyright © 2012 Devdas Shetty et al. All rights reserved. Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:00:34 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/698046/ This paper presents a team-theoretic approach to cooperative multirobot systems. The individual actions of the robots are controlled by the Belief-Desire-Intention model to endow the robots with the know-how needed to execute these actions deliberately. The cooperative behaviors between the heterogeneous robots are governed by the Team-Log theory to endow all the robots in the team with the know-how-to-cooperate and determine the team members’ commitments to each other despite their different types, properties, and goals. The proposed approach is tested for validity with the real life problem of minefield mapping. Different minefield sweeping strategies are studied to control the mobility of the mobile sweepers within the minefield in order to maximize the area coverage and improve picture compilation capability of the multirobot system. Alaa Khamis and Asser ElGindy Copyright © 2012 Alaa Khamis and Asser ElGindy. All rights reserved. Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:19:19 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/841291/ The active surveillance of public and private sites is increasingly becoming a very important and critical issue. It is, therefore, imperative to develop mobile surveillance systems to protect these sites. Modern surveillance systems encompass spatially distributed mobile and static sensors in order to provide effective monitoring of persistent and transient objects and events in a given area of interest (AOI). The realization of the potential of mobile surveillance requires the solution of different challenging problems such as task allocation, mobile sensor deployment, multisensor management, cooperative object detection and tracking, decentralized data fusion, and interoperability and accessibility of system nodes. This paper proposes a market-based approach that can be used to handle different problems of mobile surveillance systems. Task allocation and cooperative target tracking are studied using the proposed approach as two challenging problems of mobile surveillance systems. These challenges are addressed individually and collectively. Ahmed M. Elmogy, Alaa M. Khamis, and Fakhri O. Karray Copyright © 2012 Ahmed M. Elmogy et al. All rights reserved. Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:12:28 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/590479/ Automated surveillance of large geographic areas and target tracking by a team of autonomous agents is a topic that has received significant research and development effort. The standard approach is to decompose this problem into two steps. The first step is target track estimation and the second step is path planning by optimizing directly over target track estimation. This standard approach works well in many scenarios. However, an improved approach is needed for the scenario when general, nonparametric estimation is required, and the number of targets is unknown. The focus of this paper is to present a new approach that inherently handles the task to search for and track an unknown number of targets within a large geographic area. This approach is designed for the case when the search is performed by a team of autonomous agents and target estimation requires general, nonparametric methods. There are consequently very few assumptions made. The only assumption made is that a time-changing target track estimation is available and shared between the agents. This estimation is allowed to be general and nonparametric. Results are provided that compare the performance of this new approach with the standard approach. From these results it is concluded that this new approach improves search and tracking when the number of targets is unknown and target track estimation is general and nonparametric. Jared Wood and J. Karl Hedrick Copyright © 2012 Jared Wood and J. Karl Hedrick. All rights reserved. Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:56:09 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/797063/ In the field of mobile autonomous robots, visual odometry entails the retrieval of a motion transformation between two consecutive poses of the robot by means of a camera sensor solely. A visual odometry provides an essential information for trajectory estimation in problems such as Localization and SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping). In this work we present a motion estimation based on a single omnidirectional camera. We exploited the maximized horizontal field of view provided by this camera, which allows us to encode large scene information into the same image. The estimation of the motion transformation between two poses is incrementally computed, since only the processing of two consecutive omnidirectional images is required. Particularly, we exploited the versatility of the information gathered by omnidirectional images to perform both an appearance-based and a feature-based method to obtain visual odometry results. We carried out a set of experiments in real indoor environments to test the validity and suitability of both methods. The data used in the experiments consists of a large sets of omnidirectional images captured along the robot's trajectory in three different real scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate the accuracy of the estimations and the capability of both methods to work in real-time. David Valiente García, Lorenzo Fernández Rojo, Arturo Gil Aparicio, Luis Payá Castelló, and Oscar Reinoso García Copyright © 2012 David Valiente García et al. All rights reserved. Sun, 02 Sep 2012 11:31:33 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/634758/ Augmented Reality (AR) aims at enhancing our the real world, by adding fictitious elements that are not perceptible naturally such as: computer-generated images, virtual objects, texts, symbols, graphics, sounds, and smells. The quality of the real/virtual registration depends mainly on the accuracy of the 3D camera pose estimation. In this paper, we present an original real-time localization system for outdoor AR which combines three heterogeneous sensors: a camera, a GPS, and an inertial sensor. The proposed system is subdivided into two modules: the main module is vision based; it estimates the user’s location using a markerless tracking method. When the visual tracking fails, the system switches automatically to the secondary localization module composed of the GPS and the inertial sensor. F. Ababsa, I. Zendjebil, J.-Y. Didier, and M. Mallem Copyright © 2012 F. Ababsa et al. All rights reserved. Sun, 12 Aug 2012 08:13:36 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/401613/ First used medically in 1985, robots now make an impact in laparoscopy, neurosurgery, orthopedic surgery, emergency response, and various other medical disciplines. This paper provides a review of medical robot history and surveys the capabilities of current medical robot systems, primarily focusing on commercially available systems while covering a few prominent research projects. By examining robotic systems across time and disciplines, trends are discernible that imply future capabilities of medical robots, for example, increased usage of intraoperative images, improved robot arm design, and haptic feedback to guide the surgeon. Ryan A. Beasley Copyright © 2012 Ryan A. Beasley. All rights reserved. Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:39:23 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/505191/ This paper proposes a general method for robots to learn motions and corresponding semantic knowledge simultaneously. A modified ISOMAP algorithm is used to convert the sampled 6D vectors of joint angles into 2D trajectories, and the required movements for writing numbers are learned from this modified ISOMAP-based model. Using this algorithm, the knowledge models are established. Learned motion and knowledge models are stored in a 2D latent space. Gaussian Process (GP) method is used to model and represent these models. Practical experiments are carried out on a humanoid robot, named ISAC, to learn the semantic representations of numbers and the movements of writing numbers through imitation and to verify the effectiveness of this framework. This framework is applied into training a humanoid robot, named ISAC. At the learning stage, ISAC not only learns the dynamics of the movement required to write the numbers, but also learns the semantic meaning of the numbers which are related to the writing movements from the same data set. Given speech commands, ISAC recognizes the words and generated corresponding motion trajectories to write the numbers. This imitation learning method is implemented on a cognitive architecture to provide robust cognitive information processing. Huan Tan, Qian Du, and Na Wu Copyright © 2012 Huan Tan et al. All rights reserved. Thu, 05 Jul 2012 13:56:41 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/376293/ A novel interpolation algorithm, fuzzy interpolation, is presented and compared with other popular interpolation methods widely implemented in industrial robots calibrations and manufacturing applications. Different interpolation algorithms have been developed, reported, and implemented in many industrial robot calibrations and manufacturing processes in recent years. Most of them are based on looking for the optimal interpolation trajectories based on some known values on given points around a workspace. However, it is rare to build an optimal interpolation results based on some random noises, and this is one of the most popular topics in industrial testing and measurement applications. The fuzzy interpolation algorithm (FIA) reported in this paper provides a convenient and simple way to solve this problem and offers more accurate interpolation results based on given position or orientation errors that are randomly distributed in real time. This method can be implemented in many industrial applications, such as manipulators measurements and calibrations, industrial automations, and semiconductor manufacturing processes. Ying Bai, Nailong Guo, and Gerald Agbegha Copyright © 2012 Ying Bai et al. All rights reserved. Wed, 16 May 2012 08:28:08 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/103954/ Two different visual servoing controls have been developed to govern a translating parallel manipulator with an eye-in-hand configuration, That is, a position-based and an image-based controller. The robot must be able to reach and grasp a target randomly positioned in the workspace; the control must be adaptive to compensate motions of the target in the 3D space. The trajectory planning strategy ensures the continuity of the velocity vector for both PBVS and IBVS controls, whereas a replanning event is needed. A comparison between the two approaches is given in terms of accuracy, fastness, and stability in relation to the robot peculiar characteristics. G. Palmieri, M. Palpacelli, M. Battistelli, and M. Callegari Copyright © 2012 G. Palmieri et al. All rights reserved. Mon, 14 May 2012 14:40:03 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/587407/ The geometric parameters of a space robot change with the terrible temperature change in orbit, which will cause the end-effector pose (position and orientation) error of a space robot, and so weakens its operability. With this in consideration, a new geometric parameter identification method is presented based on a laser-ranger attached to the end-effector. Then, independence of the geometric parameters is analyzed, and their identification equations are derived. With the derived identification Jacobian matrix, the optimal identification configurations are chosen according to the observability index 𝑂3. Subsequently, through simulation the geometric parameter identification of a 6-DOF space robot is implemented for these identification configurations, and the identified parameters are verified in a set of independent reference configurations. The result shows that in spite of distance measurement alone, pose accuracy of the space robot still has a greater improvement, so the identification method is practical and valid. Yu Liu, Zainan Jiang, Hong Liu, and Wenfu Xu Copyright © 2012 Yu Liu et al. All rights reserved. Mon, 07 May 2012 08:56:49 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/959013/ Autonomous robots are complex systems that require the interaction between numerous heterogeneous components (software and hardware). Because of the increase in complexity of robotic applications and the diverse range of hardware, robotic middleware is designed to manage the complexity and heterogeneity of the hardware and applications, promote the integration of new technologies, simplify software design, hide the complexity of low-level communication and the sensor heterogeneity of the sensors, improve software quality, reuse robotic software infrastructure across multiple research efforts, and to reduce production costs. This paper presents a literature survey and attribute-based bibliography of the current state of the art in robotic middleware design. The main aim of the survey is to assist robotic middleware researchers in evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of current approaches and their appropriateness for their applications. Furthermore, we provide a comprehensive set of appropriate bibliographic references that are classified based on middleware attributes. Ayssam Elkady and Tarek Sobh Copyright © 2012 Ayssam Elkady and Tarek Sobh. All rights reserved. Mon, 07 May 2012 08:36:13 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/638394/ This paper proposes a kinematic model and an inertial localization system architecture for a riser inspecting robot. The robot scrolls outside the catenary riser, used for underwater petroleum exploration, and is designed to perform several nondestructive tests. It can also be used to reconstruct the riser profile. Here, a realistic simulation model of robot kinematics and its environment is proposed, using different sources of data: oil platform characteristics, riser static configuration, sea currents and waves, vortex-induced vibrations, and instrumentation model. A dynamic finite element model of the riser generates a nominal riser profile. When the robot kinematic model virtually scrolls the simulated riser profile, a robot kinematic pattern is calculated. This pattern feeds error models of a strapdown inertial measurement unit (IMU) and of a depth sensor. A Kalman filter fuses the simulated accelerometers data with simulated external measurements. Along the riser vertical part, the estimated localization error between the simulated nominal and Kalman filter reconstructed robot paths was about 2 m. When the robot model approaches the seabed it assumes a more horizontal trajectory and the localization error increases significantly. Luciano Luporini Menegaldo, Stefano Panzieri, and Cassiano Neves Copyright © 2012 Luciano Luporini Menegaldo et al. All rights reserved. Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:32:56 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/132360/ Madan M. Gupta, Ivo Bukovsky, Noriyasu Homma, Zeng-Guang Hou, and Ashu M. G. Solo Copyright © 2012 Madan M. Gupta et al. All rights reserved. Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:10:26 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/826364/ A biologically inspired robot in the form of fish (mackerel) model using rubber (as the biomimetic material) for its hyper-redundant joint is presented in this paper. Computerized simulation of the most critical part of the model (the peduncle) shows that the rubber joints will be able to take up the stress that will be created. Furthermore, the frequency-induced softening of the rubber used was found to be critical if the joints are going to oscillate at frequency above 25 Hz. The robotic fish was able to attain a speed of 0.985 m/s while the tail beats at a maximum of 1.7 Hz when tested inside water. Furthermore, a minimum turning radius of 0.8 m (approximately 2 times the fish body length) was achieved. M. O. Afolayan, D. S. Yawas, C. O. Folayan, and S. Y. Aku Copyright © 2012 M. O. Afolayan et al. All rights reserved. Tue, 10 Apr 2012 14:01:22 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/542124/ The objective is to show that on-board mission replanning for an AUV sensor coverage mission, based on available energy, enhances mission success. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are tasked to increasingly long deployments, consequently energy management issues are timely and relevant. Energy shortages can occur if the AUV unexpectedly travels against stronger currents, is not trimmed for the local water salinity has to get back on course, and so forth. An on-board knowledge-based agent, based on a genetic algorithm, was designed and validated to replan a near-optimal AUV survey mission. It considers the measured AUV energy consumption, attitudes, speed over ground, and known response to proposed missions through on-line dynamics and control predictions. For the case studied, the replanned mission improves the survey area coverage by a factor of 2 for an energy budget, that is, a factor of 2 less than planned. The contribution is a novel on-board cognitive capability in the form of an agent that monitors the energy and intelligently replans missions based on energy considerations with evolutionary methods. M. L. Seto Copyright © 2012 M. L. Seto. All rights reserved. Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:18:32 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/906545/ This paper presents a climbing robot with wheeled locomotion and adhesion through permanent magnets, developed with the intention of being used in the inspection of different types of man-made ferromagnetic structures, such as towers for wind turbines, fuel storage tanks, and ship hulls. In this paper are presented the main considerations thought for its project, as well as several constructive aspects, among which are detailed its mechanical and electrical construction, the implemented control architecture, and the human-machine interface developed for the manual and automatic control of the vehicle while in operation. Although it can be manually controlled, the vehicle is designed to have a semiautonomous behavior, allowing a remote inspection process controlled by a technician, this way reducing the risks associated with the human inspection of tall structures and ATEX places. The distinguishing characteristic of this robot is its dynamic adjustment system of the permanent magnets in order to assure the machine adhesion to the surfaces, even when crossing slightly irregular and curved surfaces with a large radius. Manuel F. Silva, Ramiro S. Barbosa, and António L. C. Oliveira Copyright © 2012 Manuel F. Silva et al. All rights reserved. Sun, 04 Mar 2012 09:08:22 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2012/375642/ A concept that allows the cognitive automation of robotic assembly processes is introduced. An assembly cell comprised of two robots was designed to verify the concept. For the purpose of validation a customer-defined part group consisting of Hubelino bricks is assembled. One of the key aspects for this process is the verification of the assembly group. Hence a software component was designed that utilizes the Microsoft Kinect to perceive both depth and color data in the assembly area. This information is used to determine the current state of the assembly group and is compared to a CAD model for validation purposes. In order to efficiently resolve erroneous situations, the results are interactively accessible to a human expert. The implications for an industrial application are demonstrated by transferring the developed concepts to an assembly scenario for switch-cabinet systems. Christian Brecher, Thomas Breitbach, Simon Müller, Marcel Ph. Mayer, Barbara Odenthal, Christopher M. Schlick, and Werner Herfs Copyright © 2012 Christian Brecher et al. All rights reserved. Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:13:12 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2011/726807/ Design of an adaptive controller for complex dynamic systems is a big challenge faced by the researchers. In this paper, we introduce a novel concept of dynamic pole motion (DPM) for the design of an error-based adaptive controller (E-BAC). The purpose of this novel design approach is to make the system response reasonably fast with no overshoot, where the system may be time varying and nonlinear with only partially known dynamics. The E-BAC is implanted in a system as a nonlinear controller with two dominant dynamic parameters: the dynamic position feedback and the dynamic velocity feedback. For illustrating the strength of this new approach, in this paper we give an example of a flexible robot with nonlinear dynamics. In the design of this feedback adaptive controller, parameters of the controller are designed as a function of the system error. The position feedback Kp(e,t) and the velocity feedback Kv(e,t) are continuously varying and formulated as a function of the system error e(t). This approach for formulating the adaptive controller yields a very fast response with no overshoot. Ki-Young Song, Madan M. Gupta, and Noriyasu Homma Copyright © 2011 Ki-Young Song et al. All rights reserved. Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:31:36 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2011/937875/ Haruhisa Kawasaki, Daniel Cox, Doyoung Jeon, Ludovic Saint-Bauzel, and Tetuya Mouri Copyright © 2011 Haruhisa Kawasaki et al. All rights reserved. Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:18:32 +0000 http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jr/2011/168481/ An application of a robotic system integrated with a vision system is presented. The robot is a 3-axis revolute prototype, while the vision system essentially consists in a laser scanner made up of a camera and a linear laser projector. Both the robotic and the video system were designed and built at DIME (Department of Mechanical Engineering for Energetics), University of Naples Federico II. The presented application essentially consists of a laser scanner that is installed on the robot arm; the scanner scans a 3D surface, and the data are converted in a cloud of points in the robot’s workspace. Then, starting from those points, the end-effector trajectories adopted to replicate the scanned surface are calculated; so, the same robot, by using a tool, can reproduce the scanned object. The software was developed also at the DIME. The adopted tool was a high-speed drill, installed on the last link of the robot arm, with a spherical milling cutter in order to obtain enough accurate surfaces by the data represented by the cloud of points. An algorithm to interpolate the paths and to plan the trajectories was also developed and successfully tested. Cesare Rossi and Sergio Savino Copyright © 2011 Cesare Rossi and Sergio Savino. All rights reserved.