Yongquan Chen

A novel design of Movable Gripper for non-enclosable truss climbing

In this paper, we present a novel Movable Gripper (MovGrip) which targets on climbing non-enclosable rectangular trusses such as bridges and space stations. It is designed with a transformation mechanism which provides the features of parallel grippers, rotatory grippers, and active wheels. For truss climbing, MovGrip acts as a parallel gripper which allows the change in gripping width according to different size of trusses. Since MovGrip is equipped with active wheels, fast climbing motion can therefore be realized. Moreover, MovGrip can be transformed into a mobile platform which is suitable for the navigation on ground. It weighs only 500 grams with a climbing speed of 3 cm/s. To maintain the climbing stability, we steer the rotation axis of wheels. By this, a directional pulling force (from MovGrip to truss surface) can be distributed from the drive force of wheels which pulls MovGrip towards the truss while climbing. Experimental results show that tilting of MovGrip can be auto-adjusted based on the proposed design. Also, it is shown that the load carrying capability of MovGrip is approximately 1 kg which is 2 times of its weight.

The design of robot for space station operation

In this paper, a simple redundant space robot is proposed to assist astronauts and execute extra-vehicular activities (EVA) on a space station. Different from conventional space station robots, proposed robot has good mobility and high coverage in space station modules. The improvement is mainly contributed by a novel rail and robot base. The rail is designed with a circular shape so it can cover most exterior of the space station modules. Robot arm is designed in high accuracy, 6 meter long and 7 degree of freedom with redundant and modular joints. It is also designed in symmetrical configuration to have walking capability among the space station modules. This paper discusses the robot design and tasks simulation.

A real-time vehicle safety system

With the increase of vehicle amount all over the world, vehicle safety has become a tremendous problem. Chained accidents, which result in numerous losses of lives and properties, happen due to the fact that the following drivers are unaware of the accident occurrence. In this paper, a real-time vehicle safety system is proposed. A prototype test platform, consisting of collision detection and classification module, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication module and graphic user interface (GUI) module, has been built for validating the performance. 12 sensors are installed in collision detection module. Threshold under rule based strategy is adopted for collision classification. We also propose a GPS based AODV (GBAODV) protocol for V2V communication application. One full version and eight sets of portable version subsystems are implemented for road test. The experiment results validate the performance of this safety vehicle system.

A data gathering algorithm based on swarm intelligence and load balancing strategy for mobile sink

In this paper, we introduce a data gathering algorithm for mobile sink in WSN system, which is based on the swarm intelligence and load balancing strategy, called SIDG-MS algorithm. The preying behaviour from swarm intelligence shows that individual could find food in swarm territorial. Each node in WSN system has limited calculation ability, memory space, energy and wireless transmission range. This action is similar with the individual of swarm intelligence. This paper focuses on the concept and elaboration of the SIDG-MS and the load balancing strategy. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of this approach. We analysis and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods over other existed methods, and defined some future work.

Energy-based surveillance systems for ATM machines

This paper presents a video surveillance system which can detect and deal with typical abnormal behaviors on Automatic Teller Machine (ATM), such as fraud and robbery, etc. Based on the case study of violent incident video records, a weighted kinetic energy extraction approach for violence identification is proposed. By using the new approach, the motion field is weighted with angle coefficient, thus reducing the video stream to a one-dimension energy series. Experimental results show that the ATM video surveillance system with energy approach is effective for typical incident classification and that the corresponding alarm signal is reliable.

Identifying the singularity conditions of Canadarm2 based on elementary Jacobian transformation

The Canadarm2, also named Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS), is a 7-joint redundant manipulator. Without spherical wrists, the singularity analysis and avoidance of these manipulators are very difficult. In this paper, a method is presented to analytically identify its singular configurations based on the elementary transformation of Jacobian matrix. Firstly, we constructed a general kinematics model to describe them in a united manner. Correspondingly, the differential kinematics equation and the modified form are derived. Secondly, the singularity conditions are isolated and collected in a 3×4 sub-matrix by several times row transformation of the modified Jacobian matrix, which is partitioned into a block-triangle matrix. Finally, all the singularity configurations are determined by analyzing the rank degeneracy conditions of the 3×4 sub-matrix. The proposed method isolates the singularity conditions, and collects them in a 3×4 sub-matrix, largely reducing the computation workload.

A GPS enhanced routing protocol for vehicular Ad-hoc network

Although Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is a subclass of Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET), some routing protocols designed for MANET, such as AODV, are no longer suitable in VANET due to the high mobility of VANET. For this reason, we propose a GPS based AODV (GBAODV) in this paper. With the support of the GPS device, we constrain the number of AODV routing packets flooding in the network and establish every route with high stability. Unlike conventional simulation strategy, we separate traffic simulation and network simulation apart with the purpose of building more reliable scenarios. The simulation results show that GBAODV reduces packet loss ratio and shortens average end-to-end delay in both downtown and highway model. Although some researchers have proposed their GPS enhanced AODV protocols before, none of them have implemented those protocols in hardware. We introduce a portable version of physical implementation of GBAODV in this paper. The experimental results validate the improvement of GBAODV.

Design of the Linebot for power transmission lines inspection

This paper presented a novel power transmission lines inspecting robot named “Linebot”, which has high maneuverability and keeps in compact size and lightweight. Linebot has 11 degrees of freedom totally. It equips with two open-close wheels and a pair of grippers, which can be driven separately. As a result, there are three main types of motions to overcome the obstacles on the lines more efficiently. Prototype of Linebot has been developed for further research. It is composed of two parts connected by a pitch joint. Each part contains an open-close assembly, friction adjustment mechanism, grippers, pitch control mechanism, which can be controlled separately. The desired motion can be obtained by appropriate control of the drive cells. The prototype of Linebot had been developed and some experiments had been done to validate the robots motions.

Optimization for rail-type climbing robot in space

This paper presents the optimization for rail-type climbing robot in space application, especially for the rail and mobile base subsystems. Firstly, the rail-type climbing robot is modeled and the evaluation performance indexs are identified. Then five main parameters are modeled and analyzed to find out the contribution function separately. Finally, the system optimization function is built. The output results offer a guideline for space researcher when doing rail-type climbing robot design.

Vehicle Safety Enhancement System: Sensing and Communication

With the substantial increase of vehicles on road, driving safety and transportation efficiency have become increasingly concerned focus from drivers, passengers, and governments. Wireless networks constructed by vehicles and infrastructures provide abundant information to share for the sake of both enhanced safety and network efficiency. This paper presents the systematic research to enhance the vehicle safety by wireless communication, in the aspects of information acquisition through vehicle sensing, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) routing protocol for the highly dynamic vehicle network, vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) routing protocol for a tradeoff in real-time performance and load balance, and hardware implementation of V2V system with on-road test. Simulations and experimental result validate the feasibility of the algorithms and communication system.