Master of Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, 2013, EECS - System and Control Engineering

ABBY is a mobile industrial manipulator, a mobile robot equipped with an industrial robotic arm. The goal in creating this robot was to demonstrate that a robust research platform for mobile industrial manipulation can be created quickly at low cost. This goal was achieved by leveraging commercially-available mass produced hardware and open source software. The resulting mobile manipulator incorporates a suite of commercially-available sensors and processing hardware to enable the robot to operate as an intelligent agent alongside humans. The robot demonstrated its abilities by performing simple navigation and manipulation tasks in a laboratory setting, and will soon be employed in research on autonomous kitting in industrial environments.

Committee: Gregory Lee PhD (Advisor); Murat Cavusoglu PhD (Committee Member); Roger Quinn PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering; Engineering; Industrial Engineering; Robotics; Systems Design

Master of Sciences (Engineering), Case Western Reserve University, 2020, EECS - Electrical Engineering

Robots are ideal for work in inhospitable environments. These environments are often far away, under water, or in space, and robots operating there are susceptible to communications lag between the operator and the robot. This results in long missions, which are tedious for robot operators and hard on remote energy sources. Autonomous skills solve this problem. Using a six DOF robotic arm, a six DOF force-torque sensor, Robot Operating System (ROS), and Natural Admittance Control (NAC), skills have been developed that are stable, robust, gentle, and quick. A robot supervisor using these skills can quickly perform assembly tasks such as removing a child-proof medicine bottle cap and inserting a cylinder over a peg even under effort constraints and two second communication lag.

Committee: Wyatt Newman (Advisor); Greg Lee (Committee Member); Cenk Cavusoglu (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science; Electrical Engineering; Engineering; Robotics; Robots

Master of Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, 0, EECS - Computer and Information Sciences

Humanity is expanding its reach into space, underseas, and hostile environments through robotics. It is desired that remote, robotic workers are competent at increasingly sophisticated tasks, including servicing, assembly and manufacturing. A key ingredient in this pursuit is for machines to sense, interpret and respond effectively to contact forces and torques. The present research describes the development and testing of low-level, compliant-motion behaviors for robots performing contact tasks. The behaviors are evaluated in a variety of useful tasks, commanded by a human operator invoking supervisory controls. The approach is shown to be tolerant of communication latencies, and makes the robotic operations inherently safe for the robot and its environment. It is further shown that the human interface is easy to master, and that low-level behaviors can be combined to achieve higher levels of robot autonomy.

Committee: Wyatt Newman (Advisor) Subjects: Computer Science; Robotics; Robots; Systems Design; Technology

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Wright State University, 2018, Computer Science and Engineering PhD

The world's ageing population has significantly increased over the last decades, which will result in one of the most significant transformations of the twenty-first century. As people age, they become more vulnerable to diseases and their health may need constant monitoring. At the same time, the number of people who have some kind of disability is also increasing. These people with disabilities may need daily assistance and monitoring of their health condition that is provided by specialists (health providers) at a high cost. A possible solution to the aforementioned problem comes from the assistive and intelligent robotics research area. The profound importance of this research area derives from several necessities of the people that belong in these groups when in hospitals or at homes. The most important necessity is to have a more independent life with increased personal autonomy. However, although assistive and intelligent robotics have significantly advanced, they are still far from completely replacing the human provider. In an effort to advance the potential and capabilities of assistive-intelligent robotics, we proposed an intelligent robotic wheelchair that is able to assist people in need. In particular, the system will assist the user to stand up, turn around, sit down or perform rehabilitation exercises. Therefore, the goal of such a system is real time response in assisting users in daily activities with active participation, that leads to quality of life improvement for certain categories of people in need.

Committee: Nikolaos Bourbakis Ph.D. (Advisor); Soon Chung Ph.D. (Committee Member); Yong Pei Ph.D. (Committee Member); Sherry Farra Ph.D. (Committee Member); Miltiadis Alamaniotis Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Engineering; Computer Science; Mechanical Engineering; Robotics

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2017, Mechanical Engineering

This thesis presents the development details of a human safety robotic arm design with variable stiffness, starting from an initial conceptual design to prototype validations. Instead of changing the compliance of the joint, this design concept introduces compliance to the robotic link itself. The mechanism of the design is a parallel guided beam with a slider linear actuated by a power screw and a DC motor. By controlling the slider position, the effective length of the robotic arm link can be adjusted to achieve necessary stiffness change. The stiffness variation capability of the effective length concept was first validated on a physical conceptual model by experiments. For comparison, a simulation model was also created for the structure of the robotic arm in Abaqus using finite element methods. All the analysis, simulation and tests performed in this research were based on small beam bending deflections. A prototype was developed based on the conceptual model, having transmission and actuation module integrated. Simple and accurate PID position control using Arduino for rapid prototyping is also demonstrated in this thesis. The performance of the prototype was evaluated by two categories of experiments: stiffness tests and PID position calibration. The overall stiffness change ratio achieved was around 20 times by static stiffness test results. The position steady state error and the overshoot of the system was within 0.5mm.

Committee: Haijun Su (Advisor); Junmin Wang (Committee Member) Subjects: Mechanical Engineering

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2011, Mechanical Engineering (Engineering and Technology)

The purpose of this thesis is to study a 7-DOF humanoid cable-driven robotic arm, implement kinematics and dynamics analysis, present different cable-driven designs and evaluate their merits and drawbacks. Since this is a redundant mechanism, kinematics optimization is used to avoid joint limits, singularities and obstacles. Cable kinematics analysis studies the relations between lengths of cables and pose of the end-effector. This is a design modified from the literature. Several new designs are compared in statics analysis of the whole arm and the most favorable design is suggested in terms of motion range and the consumption of cable tensions. Linear programming is used to optimize cable tensions. The energy consumption of the cable-driven arm is much less than that of the traditional motor-driven arm in dynamics analysis. Cable-driven robots have potential benefits but also some limitations.

Committee: Robert Williams PhD (Advisor) Subjects: Mechanical Engineering; Robotics; Robots