Recent technological advances enable gripper-equipped robots to perform many tasks traditionally associated with the human hand, allowing the use of grippers in a wide range of applications. Depending on the application, an ideal gripper design should be affordable, energy-efficient, and adaptable to many situations. However, regardless of the number of grippers available on the market, there are still many tasks that are difficult for grippers to perform, which indicates the demand and room for new designs to compete with the human hand. Thus, this paper provides a comprehensive review of robotic arm grippers to identify the benefits and drawbacks of various gripper designs. The research compares gripper designs by considering the actuation mechanism, degrees of freedom, grasping capabilities with multiple objects, and applications, concluding which should be the gripper design with the broader set of capabilities.

Throughout the last decade, many assistive robots for people with disabilities have been developed; however, researchers have not fully utilized these robotic technologies to entirely create independent living conditions for people with disabilities, particularly in relation to activities of daily living (ADLs). An assistive system can help satisfy the demands of regular ADLs for people with disabilities. With an increasing shortage of caregivers and a growing number of individuals with impairments and the elderly, assistive robots can help meet future healthcare demands. One of the critical aspects of designing these assistive devices is to improve functional independence while providing an excellent human–machine interface. People with limited upper limb function due to stroke, spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and other conditions find the controls of assistive devices such as power wheelchairs difficult to use. Thus, the objective of this research was to design a multimodal control method for robotic self-assistance that could assist individuals with disabilities in performing self-care tasks on a daily basis. In this research, a control framework for two interchangeable operating modes with a finger joystick and a chin joystick is developed where joysticks seamlessly control a wheelchair and a wheelchair-mounted robotic arm. Custom circuitry was developed to complete the control architecture. A user study was conducted to test the robotic system. Ten healthy individuals agreed to perform three tasks using both (chin and finger) joysticks for a total of six tasks with 10 repetitions each. The control method has been tested rigorously, maneuvering the robot at different velocities and under varying payload (1–3.5 lb) conditions. The absolute position accuracy was experimentally found to be approximately 5 mm. The round-trip delay we observed between the commands while controlling the xArm was 4 ms. Tests performed showed that the proposed control system allowed individuals to perform some ADLs such as picking up and placing items with a completion time of less than 1 min for each task and 100% success.

Patients with upper and lower extremity dysfunction suffer from a non-independent life.They depend on other people to do their daily activities.Hence, the importance of assistive robots in their lives and the design challenges of these robots.The assistive robots must be capable of reaching and handling different spaces and objects.Thus, the understanding of the effects of the link lengths on the performance of the robot is a critical step in the design process.In this research, the effect of the link length of a 6 DOF serial robot applied to assistance studied.Firstly, it presents a description of the robot, from the DH parameters to the dynamic model.Later, the description of the desired workspace is observed.Finally, the study of a set of link lengths, their reachable area, and required energy consumption is discussed.

Omni-rovers are three wheeled rovers with roller bearings circumventing the outer perimeter of each wheel, thus allowing a three degrees of freedom, holonomic rover. Translation within two axes and rotation about the normal increases the immediate capability of said rovers and allows fluid maneuvers when presented with problematic trajectories. With the mentioned capability, omni-rovers are an ideal candidate for use in mobile manipulators (MM), and furthermore, cooperative robotics. Thus, in this article, the forward kinematics of an omni-rover platform in junction with a two degree of freedom (RR) arm is presented. Additionally, the inverse kinematics of two parallel robots carrying a rigid object are modeled, simulated, and examined. As the inverse kinematics becomes increasingly difficult to model as the degrees of freedom increase, a known method for reducing the model is used to simplify the solution; this being the use of the Groebner Bases.

Research Objectives To provide a reliable and easy to Joystick controlled transportation/manipulation system for individuals with restricted mobility for their daily tasks. Design Experimental study. Setting In UWM BioRobotics Lab. Participants Healthy and young participants. Interventions Collaborative Robotic Arm for Activities of Daily Living assistance (picking objects from a desk, the floor, opening doors, drawers and eating), finger/Chin Joystick Control. Main Outcome Measures * Control robotics arm with finger and chin while keeping control of the wheelchair's mobility. * A lightweight software capable of controlling a robotic arm with generic/commercial joysticks. * Intuitive and easy to learn operability of the robotic arm with its multiple control modes. Results The system is composed by a power wheelchair (in this case a Permobil M3 Corpus), a robotic arm (a 6 Degree of Freedom arm with its control box) and the two user joysticks (finger and chin). Some circuitry was developed in order to communicate with the wheelchair electrical system. The experiments were performed by healthy personal in order to measure the operability and ease to use of this controller. The experiment's mean time as well as its difficulty seen by the participants were some of the variables to compare. A 3D trajectory of the robot arm end effector was recorded for the 4 different Activities in the Daily Living using the two different control devices. Each experiment had a fixed position for the wheelchair and the same initial position for the robotic arm. Conclusions The finger/chin joystick control is meant for individuals with restricted mobility, to allow them to perform their activities of daily living that were previously impossible to. This method will allow the to integrate a robotic arm in their power wheelchair system and expand its capabilities. Author(s) Disclosures No conflict. To provide a reliable and easy to Joystick controlled transportation/manipulation system for individuals with restricted mobility for their daily tasks. Experimental study. In UWM BioRobotics Lab. Healthy and young participants. Collaborative Robotic Arm for Activities of Daily Living assistance (picking objects from a desk, the floor, opening doors, drawers and eating), finger/Chin Joystick Control. * Control robotics arm with finger and chin while keeping control of the wheelchair's mobility. * A lightweight software capable of controlling a robotic arm with generic/commercial joysticks. * Intuitive and easy to learn operability of the robotic arm with its multiple control modes. The system is composed by a power wheelchair (in this case a Permobil M3 Corpus), a robotic arm (a 6 Degree of Freedom arm with its control box) and the two user joysticks (finger and chin). Some circuitry was developed in order to communicate with the wheelchair electrical system. The experiments were performed by healthy personal in order to measure the operability and ease to use of this controller. The experiment's mean time as well as its difficulty seen by the participants were some of the variables to compare. A 3D trajectory of the robot arm end effector was recorded for the 4 different Activities in the Daily Living using the two different control devices. Each experiment had a fixed position for the wheelchair and the same initial position for the robotic arm. The finger/chin joystick control is meant for individuals with restricted mobility, to allow them to perform their activities of daily living that were previously impossible to. This method will allow the to integrate a robotic arm in their power wheelchair system and expand its capabilities.

Background Building control architecture that balances the assistive manipulation systems with the benefits of direct human control is a crucial challenge of human-robot collaboration. It promises to help people with disabilities more efficiently control wheelchair and wheelchair-mounted robot arms to accomplish activities of daily living. Methods In this study, our research objective is to design an eye-tracking assistive robot control system capable of providing targeted engagement and motivating individuals with a disability to use the developed method for self-assistance activities of daily living. The graphical user interface is designed and integrated with the developed control architecture to achieve the goal. Results We evaluated the system by conducting a user study. Ten healthy participants performed five trials of three manipulation tasks using the graphical user interface and the developed control framework. The 100% success rate on task performance demonstrates the effectiveness of our system for individuals with motor impairments to control wheelchair and wheelchair-mounted assistive robotic manipulators. Conclusions We demonstrated the usability of using this eye-gaze system to control a robotic arm mounted on a wheelchair in activities of daily living for people with disabilities. We found high levels of acceptance with higher ratings in the evaluation of the system with healthy participants.

Recent statistics reveal that the number of individuals with upper or lower extremity dysfunctions has increased alarmingly. It is estimated that approximately 3.3 million Americans use a wheelchair, with an expected 2 million new wheelchair users every year. To assist powered wheelchair users with limited upper limb function, we have been exploring assistive robots that can be mounted on a wheelchair to perform essential activities of daily living (ADL), such as picking/placing an object from out of reach, feeding, etc. In this research, a 6DoF robot, xArm-6 was used as an assistive robot to provide ADL assistance. Experiments were conducted with xArm6 Robot to investigate the motion trajectories and workspace covering essential ADLs. In kinematic analysis, modified Denavit-Hartenberg parameters are used to identify the Robot's motion path and workspace. On the other hand, the iterative Newton-Euler method was used for dynamic analysis to estimate the joint torques corresponding to each ADL. Experimental results show that xArm-6 can be used for some selected ADLs tasks but not for all essential ADLs.

Robot arms have been using in different systems, which the control of designed in desired trajectory is the main task. Also, it is anticipated that while in operation the developed 2DoF robot arm will be constantly encountered with noises such as friction forces. A new integral sliding mode control (NISMC) is therefore being introduced to suppress noise due to its robustness. Then, New hybrid control system (NHISMC) is proposed, which constantly calculates an error value and applies a correction value to the system. This will enhance trajectory and minimize tracking error. In comparison with two other controllers, such as traditional sliding mode control (SMC) and NISMC, experimental results confirmed the efficacy of the proposed control method.

Dobot is a hybrid robot that combines features from parallel and serial robots. Because of this characteristic, the robot excels for is reliability, allowing its implementation in diverse applications. Therefore, researchers have studied its kinematics to improve its capabilities. However, to the extent of our knowledge, no analysis has been reported taking into consideration the closed-loop configuration of Dobot. Thus, this article presents the complete analytical solution for the forward kinematics of Dobot, considering each link. The results are expected to be utilized in the development of a dynamical model that contemplates the dynamics of each element of the robot.