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The aim of present study is to investigate the kinematics of tool-workpiece’s relative movement in conventional and ultrasonic-vibration assisted turning (UAT). The kinematic analysis of UAT shows that the movement of cutting tool edge relative to the workpiece resulted from the cutting speed, feed speed and tool’s vibration affects the lateral machined surface of workepiece and leaves a repeating pattern of crushed and toothed regions on it. This results in an increase in the surface hardness of the lateral machined surface in comparison with conventional turning (CT). A model of the tool-workpiece’s relative movement has first been developed in the present study. This model predicts a surface hardening effect for the lateral surface in UAT in comparison with CT. Several experiments were subsequently carried out employing a surface micro-hardness testing machine and an optical microscope to verify the predicted results.

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This paper presents the closed-form calibration procedure of a 5-Dof Mitsubishi robot. In this method only the joint angle information is required. But due to the limitation of the robot degrees of freedom it is not possible to attach the end-effector of the robot directly to the ground; however, we can use a bar with two ball end joints for this purpose. By doing this, the robot can move freely in space. The most limiting factor of the closed-loop calibration of robot is that we cannot measure the non-moving joints, and we have to use other joint to estimate the motion of these joints. A novel approach to estimate the non-moving degrees of freedom are presented in the paper that can be extended to other robots. Experimental results validate the proposed method and the deviation of the joint parameters compared with the nominal values of the robot parameters delivered in the catalogue is very limited and are in an acceptable ranges.

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Patients with medial compartment knee osteoarthritis (OA) may exhibit different kinematics during walking according to the disease stage, also most of differences are in the frontal plane. The objective of this study was to compare lower extremity kinematics in frontal plane between medial knee OA patients and control subjects. Three dimensional gait analysis was performed on 25 women (35 to 53 years old): 10 control subjects, 10 mild medial knee OA and 5 moderate medial knee OA patients. Kinematics waveforms were reduced dimensionally by using Principal Component Analysis (PCA). PCA scores were compared between three groups (control, mild OA and moderate OA) with ANOVA and Post-Hoc TukeyHSD statistical analysis. Ankle of mild OA patients had a leaning towards inversion and moderate OA patients had a leaning towards eversion. Patients with mild OA, had smaller range of ankle motion than two other groups (p>0.05). Knee adduction angle increased with progression of OA severity (p>0.05). Range of hip motion in frontal plane decreased with progression of OA severity and this difference was significant between mild and moderate OA groups (p=0.05).

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Inspired by the muscle arrangement of the octopus and skeleton of the snakes, a wire-driven serpentine robot arm has been simulated and constructed in this article. The robot links which are connected via flexible beam act as the snake backbone. Instead of using motors at each joint, four sets of wire are employed as octopus muscles to drive the robot arm. For the spatial inverse kinematics, after determining the generalized coordinates of the system, governing algebraic equations of the system including constraint equations of the joints and cables and favorable movements have been determined. For displacement analysis, these equations have been solved using the Newton-Raphson method. Using this method robot workspace has also been determined. For the inverse dynamics of the robot, cables tension force has been considered as external forces. Using Embedding technique with specified constraint matrix, mass matrix and acceleration vectors that are determined from inverse kinematics, cables tension force and torque of motors are specified. To validate the snake robot model, a prototype has been built and programmed for some circular and arcuate routs. Travelled pass by end effector have been obtained. Comparing the results with the desired path, accuracy of the designed robot has been investigated.

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A new complete system model of a flapping wing has been derived which consists of all effective parameters. Flapping mechanism can deliver maneuverability as well as low speed flight capability in MAVs. Here a validated aeroelastic model is being developed based on the wing torsional deformation assumption. Based on the proposed model complete parameter study could be performed and consequently the optimization requirements can be extracted. Experimental results of a static test stand have been used for validation. Performance indices, composed of force generated, power consumption and efficiency are depicted in terms of stiffness and kinematic properties. The average behavior is being referred. It is revealed that by changing frequency and speed, the optimum values for stiffness and amplitude are independent. Therefore using suitable kinematics one can utilize specified constant stiffness to optimize the flapping robot flight.

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In this article microhexapod robot is introduced as a micromanipulator. First hexapod which is a parallel mechanism is investigated and also modifications that is needed for the improvement of positioning accuracy and eliminating factors such as clearance and friction in the conventional joints. Doing this, spherical and universal joints are replaced with flexural beam type joints after scaling down the hexapod. Then the degrees of freedom of flexure joints are achieved and after that the instantaneous center of rotation of flexure joints is derived for every finite twist of moving platform and it is shown that the kinematic chain of each pod of microhexapod consists of two spherical joints and a prismatic actuator; but it differs from hexapod in a way the location of the instantaneous center changes with the change of the finite twist of moving platform. Thereafter the velocity kinematics of microhexapod is solved using screw theory. In addition, using the analytical formula, the velocity of actuators was calculated for some case studies; linear motion of moving platform with constant velocity and also constant acceleration and also movement with constant velocity in a circular path. The results are verified with the finite element analysis and shown good agreement.

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Finding a stable trajectory is amongst pivotal subjects for bipeds, which are a type of legged-robots. To mimic human gait, biped robots are basically complex because of having numerous Degrees of Freedom. The main goal of this paper is to design a stable trajectory of gaits for a 9 links robot via Zero Moment Point stability criteria. The robot used in this paper is composed of 16 active joints with two toe joint. One of the aspects of human walking to design longer strides is to use a status in which the foot is rotated about its toe joint. Here, a gait type is utilized whereas the entire sole of the support foot firstly touches the ground then rotates about its toe axis as an active joint. To achieve an initial admissible equation for robot motions, a constraint is used for initial guess of pelvis motion. Then, by using a novel algorithm, the trajectory of the joints is calculated. Finally, by considering Zero Moment Point and a trial-error algorithm, the desired trajectory of the biped robot is obtained.

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Parallel manipulators are mechanisms with closed kinematic chains which have been developed in different forms, but these manipulators have several drawbacks such as small workspace, existence of singular points in their workspace, and complex kinematics and dynamics equations that lead to increase of difficulty in their control. In spite of this, this mechanism has been being conventionally used in many different industrial applications such as machining, motion simulators, medical robots, etc. To overcome these drawbacks, design and manufacturing of a manipulator with three translational degrees of freedom are provided. Design of this manipulator was based on the possibility of three translational motions for its end-effector. The manipulator degrees of freedom are obtained via screw theory. Basic features, consisting of forward and inverse kinematics, workspace and singularity analyzes and also velocity analysis, are considered in this paper. A numerical algorithm is implemented to determine the workspace regarding applied joint limitations and the design parameters were extracted based on to achieving to the desired workspace. The robot motion is created by using of pneumatic actuators which receive their command from a pneumatic servo valve. After design steps, the required elements were provided and assembled in a robotic lab. Finally, the simulation results have transparently approved the improved robots.

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In this paper, the forward kinematics of a parallel manipulator with three revolute-prismatic-spherical (3RPS), is analyzed using a combination of a numerical method with semi-analytical Homotopy Continuation Method (HCM) that due to its fast convergence, permits to solve forward kinematics of robots in real-time applications. The revolute joints of the proposed robot are actuated and direct kinematics equations of the manipulator leads to a system of three nonlinear equations with three unknowns that need to be solved. In this paper a fast and efficient Method, called the Ostrowski-HCM has been used to solve the direct kinematics equations of this parallel manipulator. This method has some advantages over conventional numerical iteration methods. Firstly, it is the independency in choosing the initial values and secondly, it can find all solutions of equations without divergence just by changing auxiliary Homotopy functions. Numerical example and simulation that has been done to solve the direct kinematic equations of the 3-RPS parallel manipulator leads to 7 real solutions. Results indicate that this method is more effective than other conventional Homotopy Continuation Methods such as Newton-HCM and reduces computation time by 77-97 % with more accuracy in solution in comparison with the Newton-HCM. Thus, it is appropriate for real-time applications.

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This paper investigated the imitation of human motions by a NAO humanoid robot which can be regarded as a human-robot interaction research. In this research, first, human motion is captured by a Kinect 3-dimentional camera through a Robot Operating System (ROS) package. Captured motion is then mapped into the robot’s dimension due to the differences between human and humanoid robot dimensions. After performing the mapping procedure, the solution of both forward and inverse kinematic problem of the robot are solved. To this end, a “Distal” form of forward kinematics solution of the NAO humanoid robot is computed and based on the latter form an analytical inverse kinematics solution for the whole-body imitation purpose is used. The foregoing issue, as one of the contributions of this paper, can be regarded as one of the main reason for obtaining a smooth imitation. In order to keep the robot’s stability during the imitation, an ankle strategy based on a Linear Inverted Pendulum Model (LIPM) and the Ground projection of the Center of Mass (GCoM) criteria is introduced. Moreover, the latter LIPM is controlled by a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller for two cases, namely, double and single support phases. Considering the limitation on the motion capture device, from experimental and simulation results obtained by implementing the proposed method on a NAO-H25 Version4 it can be inferred that the robot exhibits an accurate, smooth and fast whole-body motion imitation.

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This paper presents a novel formulation for controlling the task space of the robot with the Remote Center of Motion (RCM) constraint in Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). In MIS it is usually required to prevent any lateral motion at the point at which the robot enters the body, called the incision point or the trocar. Therefore, the surgical tool is only allowed to penetrate inside the body or rotate around its axis to avoid more injuries to the patient’s body. The proposed control law considers the RCM constraint at the kinematic level and the convergence of the task space error and regulation of RCM constraint are satisfied, simultaneously. Moreover, the null space of the robot is also exploited effectively within the framework to perform two additional tasks which can limit the RCM movement and optimize the manipulability measure of the robot. A comparative study is finally performed between the proposed approach and a well-known approach used in the literature. To evaluate the efficiency of the approach, a planar robot with 5 degrees of freedom with the trocar constraint is simulated and the results is verified successfully.

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This paper discussed nonlinear adaptive control of a 6 DOF biped robot. The studied robot was divided to three part, fix leg, moving leg and a torso and all the joints were considered rotational. Generally, for calculations, robots are considered as a whole which makes the related calculations complex. For balance calculations, the zero moment point (ZMP) was either considered as a fix point on the ground or a moving point on the foot plate. In the presented robot in this study with priority of movements, first, the calculations were carried out on the moving foot, then the effect of the motion on the foot was inspected and a pendulum was used to balance the robot. To check the balance, ZMP in the simulation in MATLAB software was considered as a fix point While in Adams software simulation, ZMP was considered moving along the bottom of the sole. All the charts active with both software met each other. In the presented study the inverse kinematics was calculated by trigonometric method and inverse dynamics of each leg was investigated by Newton-Euler iterative method. All calculations were carried out in MATLAB software and were verified by ADAMS software. By writing the equilibrium equations, the angle of torso at each time was achieved. In the next step, because of uncertainties in manufacturing and some parameters like mass, length, etc. adaptive computed torque control was used on each leg to achieve the maximum torque that each joint needs for stable walking.

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Robotic arms are widely used for 2D desktop applications. In this paper, a new mechanism for a planar robotic arm is presented. In addition to having the benefits of both series of parallel robots, the proposed mechanism also eliminates the disadvantages of both categories. The arm made on the same side as the parallel arms has rigidity, strength and precision, and other positive features of the parallel arms, and on the other hand, like the serial arms, due to the lack of singular points inside the workspace, has a large, symmetrical and also be able to move continuously in the entire workspace. The kinematics relations for the arm are derived, and a controller based on AVR microcontroller & computer for the arm are introduced. The results indicate an improvement in arm performance and the removal of singular points from within the workspace.

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Rotary forging is an incremental bulk forming process, possessing salient advantages compared with the conventional forging, including reduced force, smoothness of operation, lower investment, apt for near net shaping and producing workpieces with intricate profiles. However, the conventional rotary forging machines suffer serious limitation in their kinematics, which originates from their simple eccentric mechanism of the actuating device. The parallel-kinematics hexapod mechanism with six degrees of freedom can circumvent this limitation. The theory and practice of this concept has been successfully implemented in the present study. The inverse kinematics of hexapod has been adapted to the kinematics of the rotary forging processes. This could yield a proper method to generate the orbitally rocking motion prevailing in the process. In order to investigate the material flow in the lower die, physical modeling was carried out by the use of plasticine and several experiments were conducted in a hexapod machine. The final shapes of the workpieces, the degrees of die filling, and the forging forces were compared with the conventional forging, indicating improved results. It was observed that the motion pattern in the rotary forging influences the time and the force required for forming. The maximum forces required for rotary forging using the circular and planetary motion patterns were 32 N and 38 N respectively. In comparison, conventional forging required a significantly higher force, approximately 200 N. The time required to form a bevel gear using planetary motion was almost half of the time needed for circular motion