Tesla Autopilot Crash: Why We Should Worry About a Single Death – IEEE Spectrum

Posted on Jul 17, 2016 by enrikds — Leave a comment

http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/tesla-autopilot-crash-why-we-should-worry-about-a-single-death#.V4O_rMI_ZLk.linkedin

Posted in Robotics

One of the smallest robots in the world from HoneyBee robotics.

Posted on Jul 3, 2016 by enrikds — 2 Comments

Robots for In-pipe inspection are a thriving research topic in the industry and the robotics community. There is a growing interest in developing new solution for inspecting pipes in nuclear reactor, fusion machines, particle accelerators, etc. Most of the COTS solutions can operate in large diameter pipes, from 100 mm onwards. However, there is a lack of solutions for small sized pipes and new research would be needed in this area.

Tagged with: DN8, honeybee, inspection, ITER, magnetic pipes, micro robots, Pipe inspection robots
Posted in Inspection robots, News, Robotics

The use of videoscopes for In-Pipe inspection

Posted on Jul 3, 2016 by enrikds — Leave a comment

The most common commercial solutions to inspect through holes, narrow gaps or pipes are the videoscopes. There are multiple types depending on the field of application or the underlying technology. Endoscope is a medical apparatus referred commonly to the inspection of the human body. Borescope is an optical device consisting of a rigid or flexible tube with an eyepiece on one end, an objective lens on the other linked together by a relay optical system in between. The optical system in some instances is surrounded by optical fibres used for illumination of the remote object. Videoscopes are an advanced type of borescope that houses a very small CCD chip embedded into the tip of the scope. The video image is relayed from the distal tip and focusable lens assembly back to the display via internal wiring.

Tagged with: Eddy current, fiberscopes, Inspection tools, pipe inspection, SMA, small diameter pipes, ultrasound, videoscopes
Posted in Inspection robots, Robotics

Dynamic modelling of robots: parameters identification (II)

Posted on May 18, 2016 by enrikds — Leave a comment

Hi! In this post I will explain the method for obtaining a set of equations to be able to identify the dynamic model of robot composed by several links even in presence of closed loops. In the previous post I detailed how to obtain an expression of the forces and torques acting on the last link as a linear function of the robot parameters. Now let us include the rest of the links.

We said that the spatial force acting on that robotic link is:

$f_n = A_n \cdot \phi_n$ (1)

However, here the interest lays on identifying the inertial and mass parameters of the whole robotic structure and the effect of all links should be taken into account.

Tagged with: closed loop, Dynamic, modelling, parameter indetification, Robots, spanning tree
Posted in Robot Dynamics, Robotics

Force estimation with Luenberger-Sliding observers

Posted on May 16, 2016 by enrikds — Leave a comment

Two lines are showed in the upper image of this video. In blue, the estimated total force and in red, the measured force. This video shows how the Luenberger-Sliding observer manages to estimate external forces during a compression task.

Sliding observers are a special application of the first developed sliding control. This type of control is a nonlinear control method that alters the dynamics of a nonlinear system by application of a discontinuous signal that forces the system to “slide” along a cross-section of the system’s normal behaviour. Read more ›

Tagged with: Force Estimation, KRAFT, Luenberger, manipulators, observers, Robots, Sliding
Posted in Control for teleoperation, Force Estimation, Robotics

Dynamic modelling of robots: parameters identification (I)

Posted on May 13, 2016 by enrikds — Leave a comment

The identification of a robot is a complex process composed by multiple steps very well defined by the research community. In this post I will try to explain the main steps in order to obtain the dynamic model of most robots. They could be either a serial manipulator or a manipulator with closed loops. Also I will introduce a mathematical mechanism to transform the main equation of the robot dynamics (See previous post) into a linear expression with the parameters. In this post, only the dynamics of the last link will be obtained. Later on, I will include the whole robotic structure.