Purpose Assistive technology products are designed to provide additional accessibility to individuals who have physical or cognitive difficulties, impairments and disabilities. The purpose of this paper is to deal with the control of a knee joint orthosis intended to be used for rehabilitation and assistive purpose; this control aims to reduce the influence of the uncertainties and eliminating the external disturbances in the system. Design/methodology/approach This paper deals with the robust adaptive sliding mode controller (ASMC) of human-driven knee joint orthosis system with mismatched uncertainties and external disturbances. The shank-orthosis system has been modeled and its parameters have been identified. This control reduces the effect of parameter uncertainties and external disturbances on the system performance and improves the system robustness as results. The ASMC was designed to offer the possibility to track the state of the reference model. Moreover, the Lyapunov stability theory was used to study the asymptotical stability of the ASMC. Findings The advantage of the robust ASMC method is the tracking precision and reducing the required time for eliminating external disturbances and uncertainties. The experimental results show in real-time in terms of stability and present that the advantages of this control approach are the position tracking and robustness. Originality/value In this paper, to deal with the parameter uncertainties of the human-driven knee joint orthosis, an ASMC was successfully applied based on sliding mode and Lyapunov stability theory. It has good dynamic response and tracking performance. Besides, the adaptive algorithm is simple, easy to achieve and has good adaptability and robustness against the parameter variations and external disturbances. The design technique is simple and efficient. The development of this control takes into consideration the perturbation, allowing to track a desired trajectory.
Purpose The following paper is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned successful innovator and leader, regarding the challenges of bringing technological discoveries to fruition. This paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The interviewee is Mel Torrie, CEO and President of Autonomous Solutions, Inc. (ASI). ASI manufactures an OEM/vendor independent software and hardware solution retrofitted to existing equipment to create a wide variety of fully autonomous vehicles spanning agriculture, mining, automotive, industrial cleaning, security and government/military applications. In this interview, Torrie shares how he first got started in the robotics field along with his experiences in running his ground-breaking startup. Findings In 1999, Torrie received a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering at Utah State University (USU) where he worked on two National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) space shuttle payloads. After his work at USU, he managed robotics development programs for John Deere, the US Department of Defense and the US Department of Energy. He founded ASI, a spin-off of the Center of Self Organizing and Intelligent Systems (CSOIS) at USU, in 2000. Originality/value Torrie was a pioneer and visionary who bootstrapped ASI from the beginning. Under Torrie’s leadership, ASI raised over $85m in a unique business model where there is no equity but only strategic partners. These foremost companies are given exclusive rights to their vertical market and jointly own their industry’s driverless vehicle’s intellectual property (IP) with ASI. The vehicles are developed and tested at ASI’s 100-acre proving ground facility in Utah. To date, ASI’s more than 100 employees and their business partners have automated 75 different vehicle types and ASI continues to create new markets. Some of ASI’s notable installations include the Bingham Canyon Mine clean-up effort; BatCat, the teleoperated CAT telehandler for the Los Angeles Police Department; and the robotic durability testing program with Ford Motors, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler Automotive, Hyundai, General Motors as well as other private proving grounds.
Purpose The purpose of this study is to design a robotic inline measurement system for spot welding quality control to achieve process requirement without any operator during the manufacturing flow. Design/methodology/approach A robot manipulator carries a stereo-camera and an ultrasonic control probe. The center position of the spot welding point is determined by evaluating the results of the edge, gradient and symmetry approaches from the methods proposed up to now in the literature to increase reliability. The center position of the spot welding point, determined in the camera reference plane, is transferred to the robot base plane coordinates with the hand–eye calibration proposed in this manuscript. Weld quality is checked by the ultrasonic test probe located at the spot welding point. Findings While operators can only control welding quality, the developed station can also evaluate the quality based on geometric accuracy by processing the deviation of the position of the spot welding points. The proposed calibration method and the results of other methods in the literature are presented in this study by comparing it with synthetic data in simulations and in practical application. Research limitations/implications The quality control is performed not only for the spot welding made with robots but also for the manual welds as well. Because of vision configuration, and reliability issues, maximum allowable offset by the correct spot position is limited to 20 mm to position the manipulator for testing. The installation and pretest works of the developed robotic welding quality control station are completed in the Body Shop Area of Ford Otosan factory in Kocaeli/Turkey. The results of the robotic control process are monitored by the quality assurance team. Integration of automation with the production line will be completed and an inline measurement will be done. Originality value In this paper, a new hand–eye calibration method based on simple and closed-form analytical solutions has been presented. The objective function is defined as reducing the deviation in the point projection, rather than reducing the error in the calibration equation. To increase reliability, combining the results of existing centering algorithms for the detection of the strongly deformed spot welding spot center, although it is normally in a circular form, has been suggested.
Purpose This paper aims to address the question posed in the title by considering the present uses and potential future role of robots in the construction industry. Design/methodology/approach Following a short introduction, this first considers developments involving the robotic automation of conventional building practices, notably bricklaying and glazing. This is followed by a discussion of the role of drones and developments in autonomous ground vehicles. It then provides examples of the rapidly growing use of robotic 3D printing of concrete structures and concludes with a discussion. Findings Many different classes of robots aimed at a diversity of uses in the construction industry exist or are at an advanced stage of development. While some seek to automate conventional building practices, others such as concrete printing robots underpin novel construction concepts. Their use has the potential to yield significant economic, operational, environmental and other benefits and many technologically advanced companies have recently been established which aim to exploit these opportunities. While the industry has traditionally been slow to adopt new technologies, robots are now exerting a real impact and will inevitably play a vital and growing role in the future. Originality/value The construction industry is under pressure to modernise and improve its efficiency, and this article illustrates the role that robots are playing in this process.
Purpose This paper aims to introduce a simple hand-eye calibration method that can be easily applied with different objective functions. Design/methodology/approach The hand-eye calibration is solved by using the closed form absolute orientation equations. Instead of processing all samples together, the proposed method goes through all minimal solution sets. Final result is chosen after evaluating the solution set for arbitrary objectives. In this stage, outliers can be excluded optionally if more accuracy is desired. Findings The proposed method is very flexible and gives more accurate and convenient results than the existing solutions. The mathematical error expression defined by the calibration equations may not be valid in practice, where especially systematic distortions are present. It is shown in the simulations that the solution which results the least mathematical error in systems may have incorrect, incompatible results in the presence of practical demands. Research limitations/implications The performance of the calibration performed with the proposed method is compared with the reference methods in the literature. When the back-projection error is benchmarked, which corresponds to the point repeatability, the proposed approach is considered as the most successful method among all others. Due to its robustness, it is decided to make tooling-sensor calibrations by the recommended method, in the robotic non-destructive testing station in Ford-OTOSAN Kocaeli Plant Body Shop Department. Originality/value Arranging the well-known AX = XB calibration equation in quaternion representation as Q_A = Q_x × Q_B × Q_x reveals another common spatial rotation equation. In this way, absolute orientation solution satisfies the hand-eye calibration equations. The proposed solution is not presented in the literature as a standalone hand-eye calibration method, although some researchers drop a hint to the relative formulations.
