Book Description

Advances in Robotics - Modeling, Control and Applications is suitable for advanced undergraduate students and postgraduate students. It takes a practical approach rather than a conceptual approach. It offers a truly reader-friendly way to get to the subject, providing a definitive guide in this vibrant and evolving discipline. This book is an invaluable companion for students from their first encounter with the subject to more advanced studies, while the high quality artworks are designed to present the key concepts with simplicity, clarity and consistency. There are totally 18 chapters in this book. Chapter 1 proposes a simple control system for a biped robot using nonlinear oscillators based on the physiological concept of central pattern generator and physiological evidence of phase resetting. Chapter 2 presents work that attempts to extract principles by which spiders and other species achieve these features. Chapter 3 proposes methods for a robot manipulator with a racket to do two kinds of ball juggling, the paddle juggling and the wall juggling, based on discrete control systems of states of the hit ball. Chapter 4 proposed a new control algorithm in a robot arm based on active tactile slippage sensation. Chapter 5 provides a look at some possibilities of modern voice analysis technologies in the field of ambient assisted living, which seems to be a promising application for robotic systems. Chapter 6 focuses on adaptive filtering techniques for acoustics application. Adaptive acoustic in an important topic for signal processing in robots since robot sound inputs are usually recollected through acoustic sensors. Chapter 7 aims at examining the method and equipment of preliminary-announcement of the upcoming operation of a mobile robot moving on a two-dimensional plane to those who are in the surroundings. Chapter 8 introduces two kinds of instruction learning systems for partner robots: (1) a hand image instruction learning system; and (2) three kinds of voice learning systems, using Kohonen's self-organizing map (SOM) and its variations such as Transient-SOM (T-SOM), Parameter-less SOM (PL-T-SOM) and Parameter-less Growing SOM (PL-G-SOM). Chapter 9 presents the study on throw-over movement informing a receiver of the object landing distance as an example of the informative motion for human synergetic robots. In Chapter 10, the author examines the application of a touch screen to an operational interface of a mobile robot remote operation system. Chapter 11 describes low processing approach for identification of obstacles in a robotic soccer team. Chapter 12 couples a general purpose stat/space representation with a reactive algorithm for mobile robot navigation In Chapter 13, the author designs an general-purposed affective behavior decision system based on linear dynamics to solve the limitation that affective model is difficult to be applied to various social robots without redesigning. Chapter 14 proposes a control mechanism based on multiple-criteria decision making for autonomous control of ambient environment. Chapter 15 proposes an information gathering support system in post-disaster environment by utilizing a robot sensor network in which a teleoperated mobile robot deploys wireless sensor nodes (SNs). Chapter 16 proposes fault accommodation procedure in discrete-event robots. Chapter 17 deals with application of robotic technology for performing risky tasks, mainly for de-mining operations. Finally, Chapter 18 briefly describes an application of robot in medial health.