Weixin Yan

New mechanism to pass obstacles for magnetic climbing robots with high payload, using only one motor for force‐changing and wheel‐lifting

– The purpose of this paper is to describe a new solution for wheel‐robots adhesion and passing‐obstacles mechanism and the optimal design of magnetic adhesion unit with finite element methods. The new mechanism makes the robot have a simpler structure, finer passing obstacles and larger payload capabilities., – After researching literature and analyzing in detail the disadvantages and advantages of magnetic wheel and structure magnet mounted under the chassis of a robot, the structure magnet is selected as the robots adhesion style. Then the paper introduces the robots structure and locomotion mechanism, the design of the new mechanism and the optimization of structure parameters for magnetic adhesion unit are described in detail in this paper. The new design can lift the robots wheel unit and change adhesion force using only a motor., – A prototype of robot has been developed and successful test results prove that the proposed technology is feasible. The climbing robot can overcome 70‐mm high obstacles and has a large enough payload capability while climbing on vertical surfaces., – The new design reduces the number of actuators used in the robot and increases the magnetic adhesion force., – Thanks to the excellent passing‐obstacles and payload capabilities, the climbing robot with the new mechanism has a widely applying prospect in the field of welding and inspecting large equipment., – The lifting mechanism can lift the wheel unit and change magnetic adhesion force using only one motor. This makes the robot have a simple structure as well as the large payload capability.

A chinese cooking robot for elderly and disabled people

Cooking themselves is very important and difficult for elderly and disabled people in daily life. This paper presents a cooking robot for those people who are confined to wheelchairs. The robot can automatically load ingredients, cook Chinese dishes, take cooked foods out, deliver dishes to the table, self-clean, collect used ingredient box components, and so on. Its structure and interface is designed based on the barrier-free design principles. Elderly and disabled people can only click one button in the friendly Graphic User Interface of a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) to launch the cooking processes, and several classic Chinese dishes would be placed in front of them one after another within few minutes. Experiments show that the robot can meet their special needs, and the involved aid activities are easy and effective for elderly and disabled people.

Kinematic analysis of a dual-arm humanoid cooking robot

The dual-arm humanoid cooking robot is able to cook dishes like a master chef in ordinary home kitchens. The kinematic analysis is carried out for the arm of the robot. Coordinate frames are assigned to each link of the arm using the Denavit-Hartenberg convention. The working space of the arm is calculated. The kinematic equations are obtained by calculating the homogeneous transformation matrix. The inverse kinematic solution is obtained and verified by simulation. The Jacobian of the arm is obtained by the vector product method.

A novel automatic cooking robot for Chinese dishes

Up to now, most people are still cooking in the kitchen, which makes them feel fatigued and also makes the air polluted. With the development of the numerical control technology, it becomes more and more urgent to apply the related technology to the automatic cooking field. In this paper, the cooking technique for the Chinese dishes is introduced and Chinas first cooking robot, named AI Cooking Robot (AIC), is presented. The robot mainly consists of four parts: the wok mechanism, the stirring-fry and dispersing mechanism, the feeding mechanism, and the mechanism of leaving the material in the middle process. In order to adjust the temperature, the fire control system is also given in this paper. Experiments show that the new robot will be a milestone in the cooking automation science because of its cooking technique.

A novel design for the self-reconfigurable robot module and connection mechanism

Many researchers have paid more and more attention to the lattice self-reconfigurable modular robot for its excellent flexibility in connection and separation movements of modules. The paper proposes a novel design of self-reconfigurable robot module (M-Lattice) with the overall description. Moreover, the key features of modules genderless pin-slot-based connection mechanism are introduced. Finally, the connection mechanism is proved to be feasible for the tasks of modules self-reconfiguration by the experiments.

M-Lattice: A self-configurable modular robotic system for composing space solar panels:

This article presents a modular robotic system called M-Lattice usable for automatically composing huge solar cell panels for space solar power satellites. The module structure design along with the model structure, the connector mechanism and the pattern of multi-module movement are described. A distributed control strategy called simulated growth enables the self-configuration. Using local communications, each module can execute path searching, path planning and multi-module movement. Computational simulations have demonstrated the practicability of the design. Whereas the current designs are mostly restricted to the situations when the modules are taken into the workspace one by one, the simulated growth strategy enables movement of several modules simultaneously or in a pipeline order.

Fault Self-Diagnosis for Modular Robotic Systems Using M-Lattice Modules

In the domain of modular robotic systems, self-configuration, self-diagnosis and self-repair are known to be highly challenging tasks. This paper presents a novel fault self-diagnosis strategy which consists of two parts: fault detection and fault message transmission. In fault detection, a bionic synchronization ‘healthy heartbeat’ method is used to guarantee the high efficiency of the exogenous detection strategy. For fault message transmission, the Dijkstra method is modified to be capable of guiding the passage of fault messages along the optimal path. In a modular robotic system, fault message transmission depends mainly on local communications between adjacent modules, so there is no need for global broadcast information. Computational simulations of one system form, M-Lattice, have demonstrated the practical effectiveness of the proposed strategy. The strategy should be applicable in modular robotic systems in general.

Design of a measurement system for use in static balancing a two-axis gimbaled antenna

The two-axis gimbaled antenna’s performance can be greatly improved if it is statically balanced. This paper intends to present a novel design of a measurement system for use in statically balancing a two-axis gimbaled antenna mounted on an aircraft. The details of the measurement system and its working principle are explained, including the dynamics of the two-degree-of-freedom flexure-hinge leverage and the control configuration of the measurement system. The measurement principle is proposed after the theoretical measurement uncertainties estimated and the key factors that determine the measurement accuracy are found. By controlling the uncertainty induced from the major factors, the measurement accuracy can be finally controlled. The measurement result is proved sufficiently accurate by means of High-speed centrifuge method.

Self-reconfiguration path planning design for m-lattice robot based on genetic algorithm

M-Lattice is a kind of lattice modular robot, which can finish self-reconfiguration in three-dimensional plane. How to substitute the broken modules effectively is a critical question for modular robot system. In order to solve it, we introduce the topology structure of M-Lattice system and math representation for the reconfiguration question. An energy factor to illustrate the relationship between energy cost and moving path is defined. The non-real time path planning based on genetic algorithm is also given. From the results of simulation, the reliability and feasibility of the planning is demonstrated.

Optimal feedback stabilization of a two-axis gimbaled system subject to saturation nonlinearity and multiple disturbances

Disturbances induced from platform motion, gimbal imbalance and state couplings, may severely degrade the line-of-sight tracking accuracy of a two-axis gimbaled system and even induce instability. This article intends to present a stable approach to realize optimal disturbance attenuation for a yaw-pitch gimbaled system, in the presence of saturation nonlinearity and multiple disturbances. A dynamic model of the line-of-sight dynamics is formulated and linearized; feedback controllers are synthesized via linear matrix inequalities and convex optimization; state trajectories of the system before and after stabilization are compared to examine the effectiveness of the feedback approach. The simulation results show that the synthesized controllers are effective in stabilizing the system and realizing optimal disturbance attenuation.