General,high-precision theoretical modeling method is not well developed in the field of soft robotics,which holds back motion control and practical application of soft robots.The concept of modularization brings nove...General,high-precision theoretical modeling method is not well developed in the field of soft robotics,which holds back motion control and practical application of soft robots.The concept of modularization brings novel structure,novel locomotion patterns as well as novel control method for soft robots.This paper presents the concept of hierarchical control method for modular soft robot system and a H-configuration pneumatic modular soft robot is designed as the control object.The H-configuration modular soft robot is composed of two basic motion units that take worm-like locomotion principle.The locomotion principle of the basic motion unit is analyzed and the actuation sequence is optimized by evolution strategy in VOXCAD simulation software.The differential drive method is applied to the H-configuration modular soft robot with multi motion modes and vision sensor is used to control the motion mode of the robot.The H-configuration modular soft robot and the basic motion unit are assembled by a cubic soft module made of silicone rubber.Also,connection mechanism is designed to ensure that the soft modules can be assembled in any direction and posture.Experiments are conducted to verify the effect of the hierarchical control method of the modular soft robots.展开更多
Many heat transfer tubes are distributed on the tube plates of a steam generator that requires periodic inspection by robots.Existing inspection robots are usually involved in issues:Robots with manipulators need comp...Many heat transfer tubes are distributed on the tube plates of a steam generator that requires periodic inspection by robots.Existing inspection robots are usually involved in issues:Robots with manipulators need complicated installation due to their fixed base;tube mobile robots suffer from low running efficiency because of their structural restricts.Since there are thousands of tubes to be checked,task planning is essential to guarantee the precise,orderly,and efficient inspection process.Most in-service robots check the task tubes using row-by-row and column-bycolumn planning.This leads to unnecessary inspections,resulting in a long shutdown and affecting the regular operation of a nuclear power plant.Therefore,this paper introduces the structure and control system of a dexterous robot and proposes a task planning method.This method proceeds into three steps:task allocation,base position search,and sequence planning.To allocate the task regions,this method calculates the tool work matrix and proposes a criterion to evaluate a sub-region.And then all tasks contained in the sub-region are considered globally to search the base positions.Lastly,we apply an improved ant colony algorithm for base sequence planning and determine the inspection orders according to the planned path.We validated the optimized algorithm by conducting task planning experiments using our robot on a tube sheet.The results show that the proposed method can accomplish full task coverage with few repetitive or redundant inspections and it increases the efficiency by 33.31% compared to the traditional planning algorithms.展开更多
基金This work is supported by National Outstanding Youth Science Fund Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant no.52025054)National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant no.U1713201).
文摘General,high-precision theoretical modeling method is not well developed in the field of soft robotics,which holds back motion control and practical application of soft robots.The concept of modularization brings novel structure,novel locomotion patterns as well as novel control method for soft robots.This paper presents the concept of hierarchical control method for modular soft robot system and a H-configuration pneumatic modular soft robot is designed as the control object.The H-configuration modular soft robot is composed of two basic motion units that take worm-like locomotion principle.The locomotion principle of the basic motion unit is analyzed and the actuation sequence is optimized by evolution strategy in VOXCAD simulation software.The differential drive method is applied to the H-configuration modular soft robot with multi motion modes and vision sensor is used to control the motion mode of the robot.The H-configuration modular soft robot and the basic motion unit are assembled by a cubic soft module made of silicone rubber.Also,connection mechanism is designed to ensure that the soft modules can be assembled in any direction and posture.Experiments are conducted to verify the effect of the hierarchical control method of the modular soft robots.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.U2013214)the Self-Planned Task of the State Key Laboratory of Robotics and System(HIT),China(Grant No.SKLRS202001A03).
文摘Many heat transfer tubes are distributed on the tube plates of a steam generator that requires periodic inspection by robots.Existing inspection robots are usually involved in issues:Robots with manipulators need complicated installation due to their fixed base;tube mobile robots suffer from low running efficiency because of their structural restricts.Since there are thousands of tubes to be checked,task planning is essential to guarantee the precise,orderly,and efficient inspection process.Most in-service robots check the task tubes using row-by-row and column-bycolumn planning.This leads to unnecessary inspections,resulting in a long shutdown and affecting the regular operation of a nuclear power plant.Therefore,this paper introduces the structure and control system of a dexterous robot and proposes a task planning method.This method proceeds into three steps:task allocation,base position search,and sequence planning.To allocate the task regions,this method calculates the tool work matrix and proposes a criterion to evaluate a sub-region.And then all tasks contained in the sub-region are considered globally to search the base positions.Lastly,we apply an improved ant colony algorithm for base sequence planning and determine the inspection orders according to the planned path.We validated the optimized algorithm by conducting task planning experiments using our robot on a tube sheet.The results show that the proposed method can accomplish full task coverage with few repetitive or redundant inspections and it increases the efficiency by 33.31% compared to the traditional planning algorithms.
