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Culture filtrates (CF) of two species of the nematophagous fungi, Arthrobotrys oligospora and Arthrobotrys conoidesat three concentrations (25%, 50% and 100%) of stock, were tested on the mortality of second stage juveniles (J2) and egg hatching rate of Meloidogyne incognita and Meloidogyne javanica. Results showed that the percent juvenile mortality was directly proportional to concentration of the filtrates. Egg hatching rate of these nematodes was inversely affected by increasing concentrations. Also CFs had various impacts on the mortality of J2 and egg hatching rate. In case of M. incognita maximum J2 mortality (28.98%) occurred after 24 hours of exposure to A. conoides filtrate at concentration of 100%. The minimum toxicity (12.5% J2 mortality) was recorded for A. oligospora at 25% filtrate concentration. At the same time, the highest rate of J2 mortality of M. javanica (19.18%) belonged to the 100% concentration of A. conoides, while minimum toxicity belonged to 25% concentration of A. oligospora causing 9.09% mortality. Maximum egg hatching rate for M. incognita (30.75%) belonged to control and minimum hatching rate (1.25%) belonged to 100% concentration of A. conoides. The highest hatching rate of M. javanica (36.25%)belonged to control and minimum hatching rate (1.25%) occurred at 100% concentration of A. conoides.

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Abstract MSRox is a wheeled mobile robot with two actuated degrees of freedom that has smooth motion on flat surfaces, and has the capability of climbing stairs and traversing obstacles and flexibility toward uphill, downhill and slope surfaces. MSRox with 82.916 cm in length, 54.10 cm in width and 29.249 cm in height has been designed to climb stairs with 10 cm in height and 15 cm in width; nevertheless, it has the capability of climbing stairs up to about 17 cm in height and unlimited width. In this paper, the motion systems and the capabilities of MSRox are described. Furthermore, experimental results of stair climbing and comparison of the results with others are presented.

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Considering frictional, inertial and machining forces, the authors have presented an enhanced analysis of a hexapod table as used in milling machines. The Newton-Euler analysis of hexapod’s components has been implemented by a simulation program developed by the authors in MATLAB environment and the results have been verified by those of others. The impact of various loads involved in machining operation carried out on a milling machine equipped with hexapod table has been presented in the paper. This provides a potential machine tool designer with guidelines on the importance of these loads and helps him give appropriate weights to them.

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Abstract - In this paper, an optimal trajectory planning method is presented for robot manipulators with multiple degrees of freedom in 3D space using a new analytical technique for collision avoidance in the presence of ellipsoidal obstacles. To generate the robot’s trajectory, a genetic algorithm with a fuzzy mutation rate is introduced to have a quick access to optimal solutions in a complex workspace. A cubic spline interpolation polynomial is applied to approximate trajectories in the joint space. In order to optimize the objective function, the genetic algorithm determines a number of interior points for curve fitting using interpolation polynomials. The performance of the proposed technique is demonstrated by simulations.

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The effect of various pesticides (diflubenzuro, malathion, mancozeb and carbendazim), disinfectants (calcium hypochlorite and formaldehyde) and oil cakes (sunflower and soy-bean oil cakes) commonly used as supplements in mushroom cultivation on the growth of the nematophagous fungus, Arthrobotrys oligospora, was studied under in vitro conditions. Carbenazim caused 99% inhibition of radial mycelial growth in Petri dishes at all concen-trations tested (10-40 µg a. i. ml-1) in comparison to non treated dishes. Mancozeb caused 43% and 23% inhibition at 250 and 500 µg a. i. ml-1 respectively and 99% inhibition at concentration of 1000 µg a. i. ml-1 and above. Diflubenzuro and malathion at 10-40 µg a. i. ml-1 caused 30-41% and 24-54% inhibition, respectively. Formalin (0.5-2.0% v/v) inhib-ited growth of A. oligospora completely. However, calcium hypochlorite, sunflower and soybean oil cake at concentrations of up to 2.0% w/v caused less than 3.5% inhibition.

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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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In this paper, an optimal adaptive fuzzy integral sliding mode control is presented to control the robot manipulator position tracking in the presence of uncertainties and permanent magnet DC motor. In the proposed control, sliding surface of the sliding mode control is defined according to the information of position tracking error, derivatives, and error integral. In order to estimate bounds of the existing structured and unstructured uncertainties in the dynamics of the robot manipulator and the permanent magnet DC motor, a MIMO fuzzy adaptive approximator is designed. This helps to overcome the undesired chattering phenomenon in the control input by using fuzzy logic. Mathematical proof shows that the closed-loop system with the adaptive fuzzy integral sliding mode control in the presence of all the uncertainties has the global asymptotic stability. Furthermore, modified harmony search optimization algorithm is used to define the input coefficients of the proposed control and also to reduce the control input amplitude. In order to validate performance of the proposed controller, a case study on the SCARA robot manipulator is conducted in the presence of permanent magnet DC motor. Results of the Simulation show desired performance of the proposed controller.

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nonholonomic mobile robots are widely used in industrial environments due to their extended workspace. Also, to increase the productivity and efficiency of the mobile robot, their path planning is an important task, and is attracted attention of many of robotic scientists. In this paper, the optimal path planning of the wheeled mobile robots are performed considering their nonlinear dynamic equations and the nonholonomic constraints. Problem of the trajectory optimization is formulated, and conditions of the optimality are derived as a set of nonlinear differential equations by means of indirect method of optimal control method. Then, the optimality equations are solved numerically, and variant simulations are executed. To verify the simulation study, some experimental analysis are done for the Scout mobile robot and compared to the simulation results. The experimental analysis verifies the simulation results, and demonstrates the applicability of the proposed method for the optimal path planning of the mobile robots.

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The equation of Motion by Gibbs - Appell formulation has been used the least for deriving the dynamic equations of manipulator robots. So, in this paper a new systematic method for deriving the equation of motion of n - rigid robotic manipulators with revolute - prismatic joints (R - P - J) is considered. The equation of motion for this robotic system is obtained based on (G - A) formulation. All the mathematical operations are done by only 3×3 and 3×1 matrices. Also, all dynamic characteristics of a link are expressed in the same link local coordinate system. Based on the developed formulation, an algorithm is proposed that recursively and systematically derives the equation of motion. Finally, a computational simulation for a manipulator with three (R - P - J) is presented to show the ability of this algorithm in deriving and solving high degree of freedom of robotic system.

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This paper presents a parameterization method to optimal trajectory planning and dynamic obstacle avoidance for Omni-directional robots. The aim of trajectory planning is minimizing a quadratic cost function while a maximum limitation on velocity and acceleration of robot is considered. First, we parameterize the trajectory using polynomial functions with unknown coefficients which transforms trajectory planning to an optimization problem. Then we use a novel method to solving the optimization problem and obtaining the unknown parameters. Finally, the efficiency of proposed approach is confirmed by simulation.  

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In this paper, the forward kinematic of the special cases of 4- R" R' R' R" R", 4- R" R" R" R' R' and 4- R" R" R' R' R" parallel mechanisms that respectively lead to two 4- R R U R with different geometric structures and one 4- R U U spatial 4-DOF parallel robots has been studied. They are originated from the type synthesis of 4-DOF parallel mechanisms with motion patterns of 3 T1R. Each of them is composed of four kinematic chains and each chain consists of five revolute joints. The directions of revolute joints have been different with each others that create three different geometrical structures. The forward kinematic problem is done in three dimensional Euclidean space and finally, a univariate mathematical expression of degree 344, 462 and 8 is indicated the forward kinematic problem of each parallel robot. Also, the results are compared with simulations.

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In this paper, an innovative adaptive output feedback control scheme is proposed for general multi-input multi-output (MIMO) plants with unknown parameters in a regulation task; such that the outputs of the plant converge to zero as well as the control gains remain uniformly bounded. First an adaptive observer is designed to estimate the state variables and system parameters by using the inputs and outputs of the plant. Then a linear combination of the estimated states by adaptive control gains is used to design a robust adaptive controller. Some theorems are given to show the convergence of the modeling errors and the control gains. The proposed controller is used to control a two degree of freedom robot manipulator such that the robot moves from any initial configuration to zero position. Simulation results exhibit the effectiveness of the proposed scheme to control the robot manipulator with different initial conditions and parameter perturbations.    

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Exoskeleton is a machine composed of a wearable anthropomorphic structure which noticeably magnifies user's might via its actuators. In this research, dynamic modeling and control system design for a lower limb type of this robot were done. In the literature at most a 1 DOF part of the robot is modeled and controlled which doesn't give a good insight on how all of the robot parts are controlled simultaneously. First, a suitable structure was chosen similar to that of UC Berkeley's BLEEX project. Then dynamic equations were derived in sagittal plane using the Newton-Euler method. By an experiment using Xsens system, gate kinematics data were measured and the inverse dynamics was simulated both in SimMechanics and on the model in MATLAB that proved accuracy of the derived model. Impedance control was investigated and some corrective remarks were included in that algorithm. Using this method the robot was controlled. It stabilized the system and the robot followed user's movement exactly. While a load of 50 kilograms was carried, mostly moments of less than 1 (Nm) were applied at each interface among man and robot.

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Flexible members such as solar panels of robotic systems during a maneuver may get stimulated and vibrate. ‎Therefore, such vibrations will cause some oscillatory disturbance forces on the moving base and manipulated ‎object, which in turn produces error in the position and speed of the manipulating end-effectors, which should be ‎prevented. In this paper, a new control algorithm for an object manipulation task by a wheeled mobile robotic ‎system with flexible members is proposed. To this end, a new dynamics modelling approach for control ‎implementations on compounded rigid-flexible multi-body systems is introduced. Then, based on a designed ‎path/trajectory for a wheeled mobile robotic system, an Adaptive Hybrid Suppression Control (AHSC) is proposed ‎to perform an object manipulation task by such complicated rigid-flexible multi-body systems. Finally, a wheeled ‎mobile robotic system is simulated which contains two manipulators, and a rotating antenna and a camera as its ‎third and fourth arms, appended with two solar panels as has been proposed for space explorations. Obtained ‎results reveal the merits of the proposed AHSC algorithm which will be discussed.‎

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Exoskeleton robot has attracted attention of many researchers because it realizes an old aspiration to attain a machine which is worn by man and maximizes his might via its powerful actuators. Thorough coordination between robot movements and that of user constitutes the greatest complexity of exoskeleton technology. Investigations showed that impedance control (IC) is suitable for this application but the present forms of IC are mostly dedicated to industrial robots which have significant differences with exoskeleton. In this article a versatile form of IC for the mentioned application is developed. Besides, according to perpetual uncertainties in load and measured force signals, for the first time an adaptive method for IC of exoskeleton robot is implemented. Simulating operation of robot in tracking user's walking motion while carrying a load of 50 (Kg) and with uncertainties in load and measured forces, proves efficiency of the proposed control method. Tracking error during simulation is almost zero and torques needed at interfaces are immaterial.

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Abstract-In this article, a new stabilizing mechanism for a two wheel robot is proposed. Such systems, due to inherent ‎instability, require dynamic stabilization. The conventional method for stabilizing these robots is moving the base back ‎and forth, to use its inertia effects. Therefore, such strategies drastically depend on the ground surface, besides the ‎robot is not able to reconfigure its manipulator to do any desired task. These limitations reduce the capability of the ‎robot to manipulate objects, and to perform accurate tasks. In order to omit these restrictions, in the developed ‎mechanism, a reaction wheel is used. The proposed mechanism exploits the inertia moment of reaction wheel to ‎stabilize motion of the robot. Therefore, since there is no interaction between the reaction wheel and the ground surface, ‎by using this mechanism there would be no concern about the surface that the robot moves on that. Also, manipulator ‎of the robot can track the given trajectories, without considering stability limitations. In order to show the performance ‎of proposed mechanism, a verified dynamics model of the robot is used and the control algorithm with various initial ‎conditions is simulated.‎

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This paper involves the investigation of the forward kinematic problem of three 4-DOF parallel robots, named as 4-PRUR1, 4-PRUR2, 4-PUU, performing 3 translations and one rotation, namely Schönflies motion. The foregoing parallel robots are special cases of 3 parallel robots, named as 4-PR′R′R″R″, 4-PR″R″R′R′ and 4-PR″R′R′R″, respectively, arisen from the type synthesis performed for 4-DOF parallel mechanisms with identical kinematic limb structures. Each robot has 4 identical kinematic chains and each chain consists of one prismatic active joint and 4 revolute passive joints. Due to different direction of revolute joints in each limb, 3 different architectures are considered in this paper. The forward kinematic problem is explored in seven-dimensional kinematic space using the so-called Study's parameters and LIA algorithm and eventually, it has been shown that an algebraic expression of degree 4 indicates the forward kinematic of each kinematic chains of parallel robots under study in this paper. Moreover, using homotopy continuation and comparison with resultant method, it reveals that the forward kinematic problem of this robots have up to 236,236 and 2 real solutions, respectively.

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A modified measure for the parallel cable driven robots is presented in this paper. These robots have additional advantages compared to other robots and even the parallel structures, but they are readily exposed to disturbances. The presence of external wrench (Force-Moment) may be the cause of violation against the motion constraint. The stability measure proposes a number between zero and one that could be the criterion for the evaluation of the robot's ability while returning to its original equilibrium which was influenced by external disturbances. To offer a stability measure, Gibbs-Appell equations and acceleration energy are used. Robot kinematic and dynamic modeling based on Newton-Euler’s method calculates the measure. To illustrate the capabilities of the proposed measure, a 6 DOF cable robot with six cables is simulated. The results of the two simulations are presented and analyzed. The stability measure is depended to kinematic parameters and also to kinetics parameters as cables tension at the beginning of motion. Therefore using the proposed measure one can better evaluate the stability within the wider range of parallel cable robots.

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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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Tractor-trailer wheeled mobile robot (TTWMR) is a robotic system that consists of a tractor module towing a trailer. Trajectory tracking is one of the challenging problems which is focused in the context of wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) that has been discussed in this paper. First, kinematic equations of TTWMR are obtained. Then, reference trajectories for tracking problem are produced. Subsequently, an output feedback kinematic control law and a dynamic Fuzzy Sliding Mode Control (FSMC) are designed for the TTWMR. The proposed controller steer the TTWMR asymptotically follow reference trajectories. Finally, experimental results of the designed controller on an experimental setup and comparison results are presented. Obtained results show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.